It is with great sadness that Carers Federation intends to close its counselling service in the late spring / early summer of 2022. The service has been available free to carers since 1997 and provided practice opportunities to volunteers with counselling qualifications.
Since 2016 when local authority and CCG funding ended the service has been funded by Carers Federation Board of Trustees through its reserves. During those five years we have sought but been unsuccessful in securing alternative funding and the Board feel continued subsidy of the service is unsustainable.
We are all acutely aware that due to the pandemic, the need to support carers has never been more acute and we have witnessed an increase in referral numbers. This has therefore been a very difficult decision to make and we will honour our commitments to carers in counselling and to our volunteer counsellors.
We are ceasing to accept new referrals from this date and have notified the small number of carers on our waiting list