November 2025
BACP’s ongoing campaign to fight to restore funding for primary school counselling in Northern Ireland scooped the silver award in the category of Best Lobbying Campaign at the Association Excellence Awards 2024.
This campaign, supported by NICF, was sparked by the decision in 2023 to end funding for Healthy Happy Minds, which had made a positive difference in children’s lives across Northern Ireland. This provided access to counselling and other therapy interventions – including art, music, drama, and play therapy – in 566 primary schools.
The campaign led to more than 4,700 emails being sent to MPs and Members of the Assembly through an online portal, with almost 1,000 people signing up to the campaign.
The judges described it as “creative and targeted” and that it “brought together politicians, children services and mental health advocates which received positive engagement from politicians.”
Steve Mulligan, Four Nations Lead at BACP, said: “At its heart, the award signifies the power of collaboration, and the unique and powerful partnership which brought together, for the first time, representatives from the professional bodies for counselling, art therapy, play therapy, music therapy and dramatherapy, in coalition with leading providers of the full range of therapeutic interventions in schools across Northern Ireland. We would particularly like to pay tribute to the Northern Ireland Counselling Forum for your support in helping us secure support from counsellors and psychotherapists across Northern Ireland which helped us generated over 4,700 emails to MPs and MLAs. We’re indebted to all those partners, and we share this award with them.
“The campaign that we led enabled us to shine a light on the need to restore counselling provision to primary schools across Northern Ireland, by highlighting this critical issue on such a high-profile platform. We’re hoping that this increased profile will help us in our fight to fully secure investment and ensure that vulnerable children across Northern Ireland get the support they need and deserve.”
This was one of two awards won by BACP, they also received recognition for their R.A.I.S.E. men’s mental health campaign which secured silver for Best Awareness Campaign.