In November 2017, we met with senior representatives of the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership (GMHSCP), the organisation tasked with delivering the historic reconfiguration of Manchester’s health and social care systems.
We agreed to work together on the delivery of the new Greater Manchester Mental Health Strategy, a key part of their extensive £6 billion Health and Social Care programme. They see counselling and psychotherapy as critical interventions and we have a unique opportunity to help shape their plans.
We'll be collaborating with GMHSCP to ensure the growing need for mental health support in the area can be better met by trained BACP practitioners.
We'll provide regular updates on the development of the Strategy as our work progresses.
Latest news
Updates
July 2018 - Four areas for focus
We’ve been working with many of our accredited services in Greater Manchester. From our discussions, we’ve outlined four broad areas where we feel counselling could be a central part of the mental health strategy:
- linking an underutilised counselling workforce in Manchester to support the GMHSCP’s commitment that 33,500 more adults will benefit from access to psychological therapies
- enhancing support for children and young people to meet the Mayor’s commitment that no child in need of mental health support is turned away
- providing a range of counselling interventions to reduce re-offending rates in line the priorities of Manchester’s Police and Crime Commissioner and the Mayor around the interaction between mental health and crime
- improving older people’s mental health via a skilled workforce ready to support the Greater Manchester authority’s aspirations to improve mental health for all
February 2018 - Thanks for your support
To help us develop practical plans, we asked BACP members in Greater Manchester to provide details of their current work and future aspirations. This information will help us identify the opportunities and the challenges, and will inform the implementation of the Strategy.
Over 280 members in Greater Manchester took part in a workplace survey to help us understand:
- what client groups they are working with now
- what groups they would like to work with in future
- their willingness and ability to take on further work in Greater Manchester
- their suggestions on how GMHSCP can improve the provision of counselling
The survey closed on 14 February 2018 and we are now analysing the data.