The cost of living crisis: Impact on the counselling & psychotherapy sector
Counsellors Together UK has grown into being the UK’s largest counsellors campaign group with over 10000 members. We work across multiple levels of the sector as well as operating within the political arena to affect change and increase knowledge of equality issues within counselling and psychotherapy. Counsellors Together UK is an organisation which dedicates itself to understanding and addressing the inequalities which exist within the counselling and psychotherapy profession. Since its inception in 2017, Counsellors Together UK has become increasingly aware of the deeply ingrained and complex mechanisms which perpetuate a culture of volunteerism. As this knowledge unfolded, it became clear that it was not an issue with a singular source but one which was a series of institutional and systemic factors working dynamically to maintain the status quo. At the point of inception the nature of these processes and how they worked together were unnoticed. Much of the profession bought into an ideal of professional ‘success’ as dependent on personal responsibility rather than the ability to access the systems which support progression and professional status. Counsellors Together UK’s work has been to make the unknown known.
This survey and its analysis are being carried out by Dr Elizabeth Cotton, an academic at Cardiff Metropolitan University and founder of Surviving Work and Maria Albertsen, CTUK founder. Surviving Work was set up in 2012 to carry out public engagement and academic research into mental health and the link to work. Elizabeth’s research into therapeutic work can be accessed here and her academic research available here.
At the end of 2020 CTUK and Surviving Work launched a survey to map the current financial landscape. The aim of that study was to stimulate a debate about the financial situation of counsellors and psychotherapists across the UK and the study of working conditions in the therapy sector. The report of this survey was presented at the National Counsellors Day 2021 and can be accessed here. This study is a modified repeat of this research, looking at any changes in the last two years and including the impact of the cost of living crisis.
The aim of this study is to investigate the financial circumstances of counsellors and psychotherapists across the UK and understand the potential impact of the cost of living crisis.
You will be shown 35 questions and you will be asked to select the option(s) which most closely match your circumstances. The task should take roughly 15 minutes. There will be multiple opportunities to leave comments throughout the survey and your data will be stored securely*.
This survey will run for one month until the 13th June 2023 with initial results presented at the next National Counsellors’ Day 2023 on the 24th June (to book your tickets go here) with a subsequent open access report and in the longer term academic publications.
If you are a counsellor or psychotherapist working in the UK please take the time to complete the survey and circulate within your networks. We hope to get as full a picture of the cost of living crisis within the profession as the basis for an informed debate about the future of therapy.
*The information being collected will not identify you to researchers or the data holder. The data that is collected will be securely stored for up to 10 years, in line with GDPR (data protection) regulations. Data will be treated confidentially and any publication resulting from this work will report only data that does not identify individual participants. Participants' anonymised responses will be analysed by the research team only. Research findings, anonymised data and quotes will be used to develop educational and information resources to be distributed by Surviving Work and CTUK and form the basis of future academic publication of the authors.