ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the structural, organizational and design elements specific to a managed counselling service in the primary care context. It explores areas such as workforce planning, service design, evaluation, accountability, and budgeting, in the real context of resource limitations and multi-professional clinical teams. The chapter looks at the detail required to plan a service that can offer easy access to appropriate, effective counselling provision to patients in primary care and identifies what a managed counselling service. The managed counselling service in the primary care setting aims to: provide an accountable, cost effective, accessible service to all service users in the local population and provide appropriate, professional, rigorous, clinically effective and safe treatments in primary care. Planning service provision needs to take into account the clinical requirements of the counsellor and also all the other aspects of National Health Service work that they are required to carry out within a complex multi-disciplinary environment.
