Regional Counselling Project

The ongoing drought in Queensland and the rest of Australia continues to severely affect our farmers and regional population. Unfortunately, there is a chronic shortage of low cost counselling available to these people.

 

In 2004 in response to this, FPCQ and Mental Health Queensland (Inc) teamed up to create the Regional Counselling Project. With MHA’s resources and FPCQ members located throughout the state, the two organisations were ideally suited to increase people’s accessibility to counselling.

 

Funding was sought and gained from the Queensland Government to provide low-fee, face-to-face, non-clinical counselling to people living in rural and regional areas, Cairns, Townsville, Toowoomba and Gold Coast.

 

Clients paid only $10 per session to their counsellor and their counsellor received $20 per session funding.

 

The opportunity to access the low cost counselling was quickly taken up by regional Queenslanders with an initial funding from October 2004 to April 2007. The project proved so successful it was continued to July 2009. The funding was withdrawn by the funding provider due to circumstances beyond their control and the project was closed down.

 

Over the duration of the project thirty three counsellors met the requirements of the project in terms of the geographical area. 2,005 clients accessed this subsidy attending 6,180 sessions.