A leading think tank's new report has included two recommendations to promote greater investment in counselling.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) published its report The state of health and care 2022 which includes a series of policies designed to ensure that the health and social care systems in England are more responsive to the impacts of the pandemic and better prepared for the demands of the future.

Importantly, it proposes that all health and care staff are given a personalised mental health care plan, the capacity of which could be increased through working with a wide range of qualified counsellors and psychotherapists.

The report also recommends that £800 million is used to provide each Primary Care Network with £200,000 on average, to fund new or scale up pre-existing community projects, including community centres, youth centres and counselling services. These new projects should focus on personalised care, social prescribing and shared-decision making.

IPPR's an organisational supporter of our COVID-19 campaign and we're pleased to see its recommendations closely align with our own policy asks.

Karan Chhabra, our Policy and Public Affairs Officer, said: “We greatly welcome the recommendations from this report, and are pleased to see that counselling remains on the local and national agendas, while increasingly being recommended by a wide variety of organisations.

“The Government must recognise the critical role our members have played in supporting vulnerable people and communities over the past two years, often meeting demand not satisfied by NHS provision and without additional resource. The UK Government must focus future investment in psychological therapy services in order provide more sustainable, holistic and timely support to meet growing need.” 

Read The state of health and care 2022.