Edinburgh Napier University

  This collaborative project critically examines the rise in service models and specifically mental health provision based on the free, gendered, precarious labour of trainee counsellors and psychotherapists in the UK, who are both givers and receivers of therapy.

To address these issues, in this project we explore to what extent the political programme of ‘The Big Society’ as a tool of outsourcing public services to the NGO sector, has taken footing in the UK society? If so, has it produced a new organisation of public services based on free “voluntary” labour, and what are the implications and effects for service recipients of these emerging changes?

We propose to interview trainee counsellors on their experiences of working, training and 'volunteering' in the sector. We specifically focus on placement experiences, costs associated with training, barriers to and expectations around accessing employment and experiences of unpaid work and free labour.