Youth Counselling Services

Our Approach 


As counsellors specialised in working with children and young people we draw on a variety of approaches.
Primarily, when counselling children, we use a
 mainly a non-directive approach - giving the child space to bring what they want to their session and explore this; however, we may on occasions offer direction or suggestions if the young person feels comfortable and with their agreement.
We have an integrative therapeutic approach,
because we feel each young person’s story is unique, we use various counselling and therapeutic methods to support them to reach self-reliance, resilience and understanding of their own lives.
We believe that play and creative methods are an instinctive way for children and teenagers to communicate how they are feeling, so when counselling children and young people we support both verbal and non-verbal means of communicating to facilitate expression, such as using the sand tray, puppets, dolls, painting, drawing  or role-play amongst other methods.
Sometimes we may support a child, teenager or young person to develop an emotional vocabulary to help them express how they are feeling to those around them.  We also try to support them to find ways to express their feelings safely.
Our approach to counselling children is holistic: we find that parental input and commitment is a vital ingredient for long lasting positive change in children and young people’s lives.
We provide regular reviews with parents or carers, to offer a listening ear as well as review the work that is taking place.
We work with children and young people with varying issues from learning, bereavement, abuse, loss, and communication, behavioural and emotional issues.  If at any time we feel we cannot help in some way, we will offer a referral for the young person to see someone who believe can.
Confidentiality

We aim to keep the work confidential. This means, that we will not discuss a child or young person's counselling sessions in detail with parents or schools. However, we will provide parents with broad themes, which may assist in some understanding and promote communication with the young person or child.
There are however some exceptions to this- mainly if we are concerned about the safety of the child or  young person, or someone they may know and we think is at risk of harm. Child protection and the protection of vulnerable adults is a vital part of our work.  Where possible and if safe, we would try to discuss this with the young person and their carers first.
Make a referral
Referrals can be made by anyone interested in the well-being of a youth including parents, guardians, social workers, child welfare workers or by any
member of the community.  Please call us and we will then speak directly with the youth and his/her
family being referred.

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