Green Party $260 million for Counselling "another bloody useless mental health policy that won't work" says Counselling Director

Green Party $260 million of free Counselling announcement “another bloody irresponsible mental health policy that won’t work” says Counselling Director.

The announcement by the Green party that they will fund $260 million for free Counselling for under 25 year olds is another example of “another bloody irresponsible mental health policy that won’t work”, says the Director of a Counselling private practice.

Steve Taylor, Director of Relationship Matters Ltd, has extensively studied the international outcomes of effective Counselling practice, and says that there is already free funded Counselling available within the mental health field, and that it is largely ineffective, because formal client outcome measurement is not a requirement of client service delivery.

“We know from the research that effective change in Counselling, if it’s going to occur at all, will occur 45%-65% of the time in the first 4-7 sessions. We also know that only 3% of Counsellors worldwide formally measure their client outcomes, so effective change can’t be ascertained in the absence of measurement” says Mr Taylor.

“In my near-20 years of Practice, I have lost count of the amount of clients being referred to my agency who have previously gone to other Counselling providers for ages, had no result, and presented more disheartened from the experience as a result than when they went in.

Providing an effective service is really not that complicated - privilege the client's voice in the delivery of service, and let the client determine if the service delivery has been successful for them, utilising an independent valid, reliable,and feasible formal outcome measure. If the service hasn't been successful, then do something different, and if things still don't change for the better, refer the client to someone who can help them, if you can't" said Mr Taylor.

The call by the New Zealand Association of Counsellors for more Counsellors in schools is also a fool’s clarion call, as we have no way of knowing how effective the current school Counsellors and Counselling services are, because again, no-one is formally measuring their outcomes against either a mean or relative effect score”.

“More” does not equal “better” when it comes to funding public services, and thankfully we have a Social Investment Strategy that is trying to answer the most important question when it comes to the provision of social service delivery – what works?”.

“Not surprisingly, this same Social Investment strategy is the one that has recently been so ardently resisted by publically funded mental health and Counselling service providers in the latest social service funding contracts round".

It seems almost everyone in the mental health and Counselling services industry is scared to death of having their service delivery client outcome performance measured, another theme consistent with the international outcome literature" said Mr Taylor.

“When it comes to mental health service provision in New Zealand, we must be able to answer the “what works” question and direct any and all funding towards those agencies and services that actually get results, as opposed to enabling those agencies and services that simply exist within the industry as beacons of ultimately useless, ineffective, and at times harmful practice” said Mr Taylor.

ENDS

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