Counselling service for young people to continue

Midlothian Young People's Advice Service (MYPAS) will continue to offer a high quality schools counselling service for all young people ages 10 to 18 across Midlothian after a funding boost from Midlothian Council.  

For every primary and secondary school

MYPAS won the Midlothian Council tender to deliver school counselling services in every primary and high school across Midlothian worth over £750,000. The service will be available to all children and young people, aged 10 to 18 who live in, or attend education within, the Midlothian area. 

Getting mental health support earlier

Counselling services in schools aims to make it quicker and easier for children and young people to access mental health support at an early stage. This funding is part of the Scottish Government’s 2018 commitment to provide £60 million in additional school counselling services across all of Scotland over 4 years.

A successful pilot

After successful delivery of a nine month long pilot project, this tender success ensures the continuation of high quality schools counselling service provision across Midlothian for at least the next two years and also enables MYPAS to increase existing local school counselling provision by 50%. 

All year round service

MYPAS School Counselling Service operates 52 weeks of the year, including all school holidays, and is delivered at times and locations to suit the needs of young people. In addition to counselling, students at all Midlothian schools will be able to drop-in to get information about their mental health or find out different ways to get support.

Holistic approach

MYPAS’s mission is to ensure the provision of high quality, sustainable health and wellbeing services to young people who need it, without delay. To achieve this, MYPAS provides a holistic suite of services. The breadth of MYPAS’s services and the ability to cross-refer between their services ensures that they widen their reach and accessibility, enabling them to work with the most vulnerable young people.

Two decades of experience

MYPAS has provided health and wellbeing services for the children and young people of Midlothian for over 20 years. They currently provide art therapy, family counselling, open-access community counselling, LGBT+ support and drug and alcohol services funded by a variety of local and national funders such as the National Lottery Community Fund, Corra Foundation, Comic Relief and the Henry Smith Charity.

Welcome news

Midlothian Council Director Morag Barrow welcomed the news: “Every young person deserves the right to access free mental health support at their easiest convenience and MYPAS’s highly qualified and highly experienced school-based counsellors can do this. Lockdown has affected young people therefore I’m delighted young people of Midlothian will have continued support from MYPAS through school counselling.”

Improving health and wellbeing

Dave Evans, Chief Executive of MYPAS expresses what this award means for MYPAS: “I am thrilled that MYPAS has won this important tender. It means we can carry on the valuable work we started in developing the pilot service over the last 9 months and build on not only the experience gained but the strong working relationships with our partner agencies. This service will continue to dovetail with the wide range of services MYPAS already offers to work towards providing greater access for Midlothian’s young people to improve their health and wellbeing.”

Increased support

Nancy Burn, Service Manager for Counselling services in Midlothian says, “At a time when it’s estimated that 10% of children and young people (5-16 years) in Scotland have a clinically diagnosable mental health issue, which is approximately 3 in every classroom, it is fantastic that we can continue our schools counselling and actually increase the support available to all young people. It’s really important that every young person can easily access high quality support for their emotional well-being. At MYPAS, we’ve succeeded in setting-up and delivering the Midlothian pilot service during a global pandemic, which demonstrates the level of commitment and flexibility that we strive for across all MYPAS services.”

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26 Jul 2021