The Counselling Foundation is mental health charity operating in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and London. Our core missions are to provide counselling therapy at low cost to financially disadvantaged clients suffering from anxiety, depression and allied emotional and psychological conditions, and to promote mental wellbeing more generally. In addition we offer accredited training to those wishing to develop careers as counselling therapists, or who wish to widen their own personal understanding of mental health and wellbeing issues.
In addition to these core activities we support the NHS and other public bodies through a variety of counselling contracts and we also offer mental health support programmes to a range of corporate clients.
We have an outstanding team of managers, support staff, counsellors and trainers, all of whom are deeply committed to the work we do. We have responded to the COVID situation successfully, moving all of our counselling and training activities to remote models; and we now see the opportunity, as COVID subsides, to offer a range of hybrid remote/face to face opportunities to both clients and trainees. So far we have weathered the COVID storm showing adaptability, creativity and resilience.
In 2019 we delivered 25,000 low cost counselling sessions including 13,500 sessions provided under contract to the NHS and other public bodies. Student numbers on all courses were just over 400 of which just under 200 were on courses leading to professional qualification.
In the current year counselling sessions have held up well after an initial fall off as COVID lockdown restrictions were introduced. However, once our remote counselling model bedded in, numbers recovered and we expect to end the year down a bit on 2019 but only by a relatively small margin. Trainee numbers have held up well despite the move to remote delivery and we are signing up new trainees starting their qualification journey at a rate very similar to last year. Both of these outcomes are remarkable given the circumstances and they give us a positive sense of confidence for the immediate future.
Besides these key activities over 2019/20 we have also started to establish some traction in webinar based mental health awareness training in the corporate sector, especially amongst smaller to medium sized organisations. At this stage this is limited but we see potential for growth and it is possible that the COVID situation will accelerate interest as employers become more concerned about the mental health effects on employees, and the potential impact this may have on their enterprises. At this stage we are testing the market and gathering experience of it before committing to it as a new line of activity.
We have a unique model whereby income from these various activities fully funds our low cost offering without the need for or dependency on grants, donations or other fundraising activities. We are therefore financially self-sustaining and although we do undertake limited fundraising activities we have no reliance on them. As much as added income the main value of this activity is to create brand presence and awareness of our organisation and the promotion of mental wellbeing in general.
