Counsellors bid to save youth mental health service

Efforts are being made to save Mental Health Aberdeen's youth service

Counsellors at one of Scotland's oldest mental health charities are trying to save its youth service - after it closed suddenly leaving about 1,000 children and young people without support.

Mental Health Aberdeen, which operated for 75 years, announced last week it was shutting with immediate effect.

It said it faced a "complex set of circumstances and rising operational costs".

However, former staff are trying to restart some services, including those previously provided in every primary and secondary school in the city, as well as student counselling.

Ex-employees told BBC Scotland News it was "devastating" for young people to be left so suddenly without counselling and they want to set up a new charity.

Alan McTamney was involved in the charity's ACIS Youth scheme which offered free one-to-one therapeutic counselling to young people.

Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland's Drivetime programme, he said a number of those involved in the scheme were looking at setting up their own charity to provide a similar service.

He said he hoped it could "maybe send a message to our client group that they're not forgotten, and we haven't abandoned them".

Escalate mental health issues

"There are no other services in Aberdeen city that do what we do," he said.

"We would be very worried about how that escalates mental health issues."

Mr McTamney said there had been a huge demand for counselling services in schools.

He said: "Last year we offered in excess of 12,000 appointments, and that only gets bigger the more we're able to attend to the needs of children and young people."