The National Youth Agency: Quality - Youth Access seeks information on young counselling workforce

The Counselling Workforce Development Project intends to help young people's information, advice counselling and support services (YIACS) to make a more effective and sustainable contribution to wider service reforms at national and local level.

Youth Access, the national membership organisation for YIACS and a partner of The National Youth Agency, is gathering information at national level about the current counselling workforce, their needs, concerns, gaps and aspirations together with young people's experience of counsellors. The project will analyse the benefits and barriers to the engagement of the youth counselling workforce in local integrated working arrangements and develop strategies to help relevant agencies improve their training and planning. A national survey has been launched to garner accurate and up-to-date information on the profile of the youth counselling workforce. This month a young people's consultation is being held to collect young people's views of youth counsellors and how accurately their needs are being met. A seminar later this year will consult both YIACS and young people on the findings from the national survey and the youth consultation, with a final report due in July to inform the overall workforce counselling strategy. The survey, which is open until 25 April, is available at www.youthaccess.org.uk.