A counselling service for women – described as “a deeply valued lifeline” – faces the axe after health chiefs said that they were scrapping its grant.
The service, offered by the Brighton Women’s Centre to help women with their mental health, is to lose an £80,000 grant from the Brighton and Hove Community Wellbeing Partnership.
Brighton Women’s Centre director Lisa Dando said that she was “hugely disappointed and gravely concerned” while Green Party councillors condemned the cut.
Councillor Phélim Mac Cafferty, convenor of the opposition Green group on Brighton and Hove City Council, said: “A hundred years ago today, some women won the right to vote.”
On Wednesday 6 February 1918 women were given the vote in parliamentary elections on reaching 30 or if they owned property or were married to a man who had the right to vote.
Councillor Mac Cafferty said: “It should be a day for celebration but it’s clear there is still far to go for genuine lasting equality for women.”
The counselling service is one of the core services available at the Brighton Women’s Centre.
Lisa Dando said: “Brighton Women’s Centre is hugely disappointed and gravely concerned about the decision to remove funding from its women-only counselling service – the only holistic, trauma-informed and gender-specific service in the city.
“We know from national and local reports that women’s mental health needs are escalating, with 22 per cent of women in Brighton and Hove compared to 15 per cent of men living with depression.
“For many women anxiety and depression are the tip of the iceberg – symptoms that often belie more serious evidence of past trauma.
“We feel strongly that while this cut to our funding will save money in the short term it will certainly result ultimately in greater strain on our already overstretched health service – not to mention the further negative impact on the health inequalities of women and their families.”
Councillor Mac Cafferty said: “I have been horrified to learn that there is a cut to the counselling service for Brighton Women’s Centre – a service funded by local health authorities.
“The Brighton Women’s Centre were given just three months’ notice with no consultation on the decision.
“This is a grant of £80,000. But as anyone who has worked with the Brighton Women’s Centre knows, they not only stretch every penny but are also a deeply valued lifeline to so many.
“Research from the Women’s Budget Group suggests as much as 85 per cent of the burden of austerity since 2010 has fallen on women – and cuts to social care and mental health have been massive.
“In the context of this, services such as counselling need protecting, not cutting.
“Greens condemn government cuts that have had a huge impact on women. On today of all days we say austerity has been massively destructive to women.
“We will continue the fight against the Tories’ failed austerity experiment – and the fight continues for women’s full participation in society.”
Councillor Lizzie Deane, Green councillor for the St Peter’s and North Laine Ward, said: “A damning report by the Mental Health Foundation found that services targeted at mental health problems among women and girls are ‘almost entirely absent’ from current government strategy.
“We appeal to the Wellbeing Partnership to reverse this cut to vital counselling services at the Brighton Women’s Centre.
“If this cannot be supported directly through existing funding, we ask them to work with the council, other public bodies and community and voluntary organisations to ensure that this cut is reviewed and halted.
“The bold suffragettes knew 100 years ago that the fight for equality would not end with the vote.
“We have only to look at the cuts affecting our fantastic Women’s Centre and women’s refuges nationwide to see that fight for women’s rights in public life is far from over.”
The Brighton Women’s Centre counselling service offers short-term counselling to women who experience anxiety and/or depression.
The counselling is free of charge, making it available for women who are financially disadvantaged. It has been funded largely by the Brighton and Hove Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).
For more information, visit http://www.womenscentre.org.uk/services/counselling.
