Frequently, social action projects seek to address gaps in public service provision. Projects can, understandably, feel that the public sector should fund them to do the work that public services should be doing.
However, small NGOs are in a different position from public services for a number of reasons. For instance, they have a level of flexibility that public sector organisations do not. That puts them in a position to respond more speedily and effectively to social needs.
Funding is always an issue for small organisations. But if accepting the funding means your project ends up becoming a mini-public sector organisation, should you turn down an offer of funding from the public sector? It is hard enough to get them to acknowledge what you are doing in the first place! Is it ethical to take the money. Is it ethical not to?
We will be talking about these and other issues, on the public – third sector continuum, in this, the third of our conversations. This conversation links with the fifth scheduled conversation on Money Matters.
Course Content
Presenter
After qualifying as a psychotherapist, Beverley Costa set up Mothertongue multi-ethnic counselling service (2000-2018) for multilingual clients. In 2009 she created a pool of mental health interpreters, in 2010 she established the national Bilingual Therapist and Mental Health Interpreter Forum and founded The Pásalo Project in 2017 www.pasaloproject.org to disseminate learning from Mothertongue.
She has trained over 5,000 therapists for NHS services and NGOs, in working therapeutically across languages and with interpreters since 2013. She is a Senior Practitioner Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London and a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Reading.
In 2020, Pásalo created an e-learning resource for the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy: The Social Response Cycle – about effective therapeutically framed social action.
https://www.bacp.co.uk/cpd/social-response-cycle-member-resource/
In the same year (2020), The Paul Hamlyn Foundation awarded The Pásalo Project funding through its Ideas and Pioneers programme to create a free e-learning resource on mental health and multilingualism https://www.pasaloproject.org/multilingualism-mental-health-and-psychological-therapy—course-content.html .
She has run Reflective Practice Support groups for interpreters, psychological therapists and counsellors, nurses, teachers, lawyers, and psychosocial workers. She has developed an introductory course in facilitator skills for running Reflective Practice Groups which has been delivered online to organisations in England, Scotland, Wales and Belgium. She is the author of Other Tongues -psychological therapies in a multilingual world https://tinyurl.com/Other-Tongues
