The Scottish Government鈥檚 拢60 million commitment to fund counsellors in all secondary schools by the end of October remains on track, a parliamentary committee has heard.

Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, John Swinney MSP gave evidence to the Scottish Parliament鈥檚 Education Committee on Wednesday (17 September) following a wide range of questions relating to Covid-19.

He confirmed that all local authorities will have counsellors in place to fulfil the school counselling pledge by next month鈥檚 deadline.

His answer was in response to a question from Rona Mackay MSP.

It follows concerns raised in an evidence session in February by a number of counselling providers who feared recruitment challenges may impact negatively on delivering the policy. 聽聽

Our Four Nations Lead Steve Mulligan said 聽

鈥淭his important commitment follows more than 10 years of lobbying with our members to secure this investment.

鈥淥ver the past two years,聽 we have worked closely with Scottish Government to help advise on the implementation of the programme and we鈥檙e pleased to see it鈥檚 now coming to fruition in ensuring that qualified and professional counsellors are able to provide the therapeutic support that Scotland鈥檚 children and young people desperately need.

鈥淭his is particularly important in helping to address the mental health impact of the pandemic and lockdown measures which had such a negative impact on our children and young people鈥澛�

鈥淪cotland has joined Wales and Northern Ireland in providing a nationally funded programme of counselling support and we are urgently calling on UK Government to do the same in England - there is no more crucial time than now to do this鈥澛�

As with all new programmes of this magnitude we expect there may be some challenges in some areas as these new services bed in.

We鈥檙e keen to hear from members in Scotland about any concerns you have with implementation so we can pass these directly onto officials.聽Please contact PublicAffairs@bacp.co.uk

Support our campaign

We believe that a paid counsellor should be available in every secondary school, academy and further education college in England.

This will be the main request in our response to the UK Government鈥檚 Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), which sets a blueprint for spending over the next four years.聽

Please support our campaign by using our email template to write to your MP to ask them to support our proposals.