A CALL has been made for the Government to fund counselling for every secondary school pupil in Scotland.
The group representing 37,000 counsellors and psychotherapists in Britain said funding was needed so the service is available to young people who need it.
It has been proposed by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) in its submission to a consultation on the new Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill.
The Bill includes measures to improve access to counselling for troubled families but BACP said this falls short of providing it to all young people.
In its written evidence to the consultation, BACP says access needs to be more widely available.
It described the limited Scottish proposals as a major omission in a context where 8% of Scots children aged 5-16 were identified as having mental health problems, according to 2004 figures from the Office of National Statistics.
The same study found that almost 45% of Scottish children in council care suffered from poor mental health.
Where counselling is offered, the association says that families should be given information or the types of therapy available and a choice of what is provided.
Karen Cromarty, BACP senior lead adviser on children and young people, said: "Studies in Scotland have shown that counselling can directly help with a range of issues such as bullying, bereavement and eating disorders.
"The Scottish Government called for counselling for all young people in 2005, and this legislation presents the first opportunity to make this a reality."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article