Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to complete our survey about how you’ve coped with moving your practice online during this pandemic.

Your feedback is helping us understand what we can do to support you in your current ways of working as well as the CPD and resources we can produce to help you through and beyond these unprecedented times.

The survey is still open, but we’ve looked at the preliminary results to let you know what some of the feedback has been so far.

We asked if you’ve been able to continue practising during the pandemic and so far 88% of you said you’ve been able to continue providing counselling and psychotherapy since the government restrictions came into place.

We’ve introduced many key resources from what you’ve been telling us you need. This includes moving your practice online, with 39% of those who responded telling us they intend to undertake training in online counselling.

However, 76% of those who have completed the survey have seen a decrease in the number of clients you’re seeing and 80% have reported a decrease in the number of referrals when compared to your usual circumstances. More than one in 10 of those who completed the survey (11.8%) say clients have raised issues relating to coronavirus ‘all the time’ in appointments, with one in three therapists (33.3%) saying the topic had come up ‘a lot’

While these results are troubling, they highlight how vital the counselling and psychotherapy workforce is to help people through these exceptional times. This is why we’re calling on the Government to work with us to ensure there is a workforce to deliver a comprehensive mental health response to the crisis. So far the campaign, launched with BPC and UKCP, has been backed by more than 10,000 people and supported by 24 organisations. We’ve written to the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock MP, and relevant health and mental health ministers across each nation of the UK to reaffirm the critical role counselling and psychotherapy play in supporting the nation through the coronavirus crisis.

We’re still listening to your views and we’ll update you more on the results once the survey closes. If you haven’t yet done so, please take a few moments to complete our short survey so we can continue to provide you with the support you need