We're currently in the process of drawing together our submission for the UK Government’s 2021 spending review (SR21), to make the case for increased investment in coaching - alongside a suite of key counselling and psychotherapy measures to help the nation rebuild from the pandemic.   

The Spending Review 2021 is an important process for BACP to engage with as it will set departmental budgets from 2022-2023 to 2024-2025 and the devolved administrations’ block grants for the same period. The review will conclude alongside an autumn budget on 27 October 2021.  

The big focus of this year’s spending review is to 'Build Back Better' from the pandemic, through strong and innovative public services and supporting the government’s levelling up agenda to spread opportunity across the UK. Our response needs to set out a robust case which will demonstrate how investing in coaching and counselling will help government to meet these clear objectives - demonstrating likely effectiveness, deliverability and value for money.

Coaching is a critical intervention to help the nation to heal; supporting individuals, families and organisations to navigate a path through the challenges ahead as we begin to rebuild from the pandemic. It provides a structured and tailored framework which enables them to set goals, develop new ways of working and support growth. Our Spending Review response will aim to highlight the benefits of investing in therapeutic coaching provided by qualified counsellors and psychotherapists who bring an additional emotional depth in providing proactive and goal-focused interventions. 

Within our submission we're very keen to make the case for investment in coaching to support the health and wellbeing of the health and social care workforce. This recognises the very big challenges this sector continues to face, and also builds on the Counselling through Covid initiative that's supported NHS leaders throughout the pandemic. Our call for support also draws on a very recent example in Scotland’s Programme for Government 2021, where a new coaching for wellbeing programme is being established to provide free digital coaching via Scotland’s National Wellbeing Hub. This forms part of an £8 million package this financial year to support the mental health and wellbeing of the health and social care workforce in Scotland. We'd like to see this support replicated across the NHS, in each nation of the UK, providing funded digital and face to face support.  

Further to this, we'd like to include a call for investment in accessible and funded coaching in community settings to help individuals to cope with the ongoing uncertainties as the nation begins to live with the pandemic, enabling self-care and promoting wellbeing.

Help us strengthen the case for investment

We'll be using data and information provided by members of the BACP Coaching division, alongside data from our various workforce surveys, to evidence our call for increased counselling support. In addition to this, we're urgently looking for service providers and individual BACP coaches from across the UK to help provide us with succinct case study examples of publicly funded coaching provision that we can quote in our submission. Policy makers are particularly keen to hear the voice of people with lived experience, and we'd welcome quotes from clients who've benefitted from coaching as part of their recovery.  

The deadline for our Spending Review response is very tight – so we'd be grateful if you could provide succinct cases studies to us by 29 September 2021 which we can use within our response. If you're unable to meet the spending review deadline and would still like to contribute case studies then please do get in touch, going forward these will be used to help inform our responses to Government consultations and select committee inquiries across all nations of the UK, which we respond to on an ongoing basis.

If you can help please get in touch with BACP's public affairs team. 

Views expressed in this article are the views of the writer and not necessarily the views of BACP. Publication does not imply endorsement of the writer’s views. Reasonable care has been taken to avoid errors but no liability will be accepted for any errors that may occur.