NHS mental health counsellors have voted to strike to get the pay and respect they deserve, says UNISON today.
They voted overwhelmingly (94%) in favour of industrial action over being paid trainee rates, despite being fully qualified.
The counsellors are currently employed by Norfolk and Waveney Mind to provide talking therapy services for patients with long-term or complicated mental health problems at Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT).
Staff are pushing to move up the NHS salary scale, to the same pay point as counsellors doing equivalent jobs within most other NHS trusts across the country and in line with the NHS Talking Therapies Manual, which lays out how services should be delivered, says UNISON.
The independent British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy has written to Mind agreeing that the workers should be moved up a band.
Counsellors have spent nearly two years trying to resolve the issue but have been forced to vote for strikes after making little headway, says the union.
At recent talks, UNISON and Mind agreed to ask NSFT to join discussions about the service. But the trust turned down the invitation.
UNISON Eastern regional organiser Cameron Matthews said: “Counsellors want to help their patients, but they deserve to be paid and rewarded properly.
“Publicly, Mind campaigns for action to tackle the crisis in mental health. But as an employer it’s undermining the fight and paying the very people on the front line thousands less than they’re due.
“For bosses to ignore the evidence from other trusts across the country and NHS rules on talking therapy services is bizarre. It’s irresponsible for the trust to refuse to take part in discussions about the services it commissions.
“If the trust won’t talk and Mind won’t change, these counsellors will have no choice but to strike to right this wrong.”
