Youth Access

In this section

Counselling Projects

Youth Access is firmly established as the national lead body for youth counselling and through its member agencies is the largest provider of youth counselling services across the country.

Building the youth counselling evidence base

We research, collate, analyse, disseminate and contribute to national projects on young people’s emotional and mental health. Our research reports and their findings identify the barriers to accessing youth counselling services and young people’s experience of counselling. Our findings influence central and local policy and the development of services for 13 to 25s. 

See our publications page for examples of key reports and finding briefings. 

Workforce Development and Training

Counsellors working with young people require a wide range of skills, knowledge and abilities, within a range of theories, perspectives and practice specific to working with young people. Our work seeks to improve the quality and quantity of practitioners by:

• Running a highly-regarded national programme of skills and knowledge-based training
  Read more about Youth Access counselling training
  
• Influencing the youth workforce reform agenda and contributing to the development of National Occupational Standards for Psychological Therapies and the consultations on the Regulation of Psychological Therapies led by the Health Professions Council.

Promoting good practice

We have developed a number of key findings briefings, toolkits and other resources promoting good practice in the delivery of youth counselling. These are available for free download from our publications and resources pages. We are also involved in piloting COREYP; the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) outcome tools and the MANSA quality of life outcome tool.

Policy work & campaigning

We campaign vigorously for changes to Government policy that will improve young people’s access to counselling services. Youth Access has recently joined with the Mental Health Foundation, Young Minds and others to form a Coalition for Change on Children and Young people’s Mental Health.

Projects

• Our Making Tracks project (MtP) is funded by the DH and aims to improve services for young adults with complex needs by developing better partnership working between GPs/PCTs and VCS Information Advice and Counselling services.
  Read more about the Making Tracks Project
  
• We have conducted the first stage of our Measuring Up Project (MUp) which aims to secure a more robust evidence base for youth counselling by conducting an ethical randomised controlled trial. 
  Read more about Measuring Up
  
• We are currently delivering nationally commissioned training for Relate counsellors to work with young people. We have successfully run three of the seven day training packages based on our current CPD programme and are now embarking on a fourth.
  
• We are currently discussing the national accreditation of our training for youth counsellors with a university
  
• We have produced a briefing and a training course on the New Vetting and Barring Scheme and the role of the Independent Safeguarding Authority.
   Read the vetting and safeguarding briefing here 
  See details of our training course on Safeguarding and Child Protection, here.