“There was also a big increase in demand for services over the past few years and this placed considerable extra financial strain on the organisation. Regrettably this means that the provision of counselling and psychotherapy services is no longer sustainable.

“The closure of these services will be an enormous loss to our whole community, not only to those in distress and those who self-referred, but also to the many GPs, Cavan General Hospital Psychiatric Department and the Children and Adult Mental Health Services (CAMHS), who referred their patients to the CFRC for counselling and psychotherapy,” continued the statement.

All of the therapists associated with CFRC were highly qualified and accredited with the IACP, IAHIP, BACP and PSI. The sudden closure of the service has resulted in distress for both the clients currently availing of the service and the therapist group delivering the service over the past 20 years.

The centre continues to operate providing other services such as support for children affected by bereavement through the Rainbow Group, and 14 new volunteers are currently being trained. The family mediation service which has been going for 10 years with the help of professionally trained volunteers is still providing a superb service and they also provide neighbourhood mediation. There were 1,100 appointments for counselling in the past year and in the region of 12,000 families have been helped in the past 20 years.

