Accessing CCS services
Clients can self-refer to CCS by emailing, phoning the office or completing the referral form here on the website. Referrals can also be made via GP, NHS Mental Health Team and other agencies, but we do not require you to be referred by other services.
Referral criteria
- Clients must be over 18 years old and reside in postcode areas CT1, CT2, CT3, CT4, CT5, CT6 or ME13
- We work with individuals, not couples or families
- All sessions are conducted face-to-face, we do not offer online or phone sessions
Limitations
- There are some issues for which we would not be the most appropriate service. These include:
- Current mental health crisis
- Current active eating disorders
- Diagnosed OCD
- Domestic Abuse
- Alcohol/Drug addiction
- EMDR treatment for trauma
if you are seeking help with any of the above please view our Useful Links page containing contacts for services who specialise in these areas
- We are unable to work with clients who are currently involved in court proceedings or prosecutions
- We are not experienced or qualified to work with anyone on the sex offenders register
- We do not offer counselling to pregnant women during their 3rd trimester, i.e. 6 – 9 months pregnant
- Previous clients who have had counselling here must wait a year after ending before referring for a new assessment
Assessment
Once we have your referral, we will phone you (up to 3 times) to offer you an assessment appointment, lasting about 50 mins, where we can ask you for a summary of what problems you wish to address in counselling, and your history of life experiences which are relevant to your issues. After assessment, if you and we think that counselling is the best way forward we then put you on our waiting list to meet with a counsellor when a suitable one becomes available.
Waiting times
Unfortunately, there is a waiting list to start counselling, and it can take a number of months before you will start. The length of wait will depend upon your availability, choices about what kind of counsellor you and we think is best for you, and the number of people coming to us. We like to remind clients that although there will be a wait, you are waiting for a long term engagement, so when you get in you will have up to 46 sessions to work on your issues.
As well as the list being long, sometimes it can be hard to find a suitable counsellor at the right time of day – we will hold all clients’ details for a maximum of 2 years, but if we are unable to allocate a counsellor in that time we will take the client off our waiting list and inform them.
Counsellors
We have a team of over 50 counsellors, some qualified, some in training, who all work part-time, volunteering the hours that they can each week. All counsellors, trainee and qualified, are members of the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP), the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) or the British Psychological Society (BPS) and work to their Ethical Framework guidelines, so you can be assured that your counsellor is working according to professional industry standards. All counsellors are also DBS-checked and insured for public indemnity. Please note we are unable to offer interpreters here, all work is conducted in English.
Cost
As an independent non-profit organisation we do not receive funding from any outside sources. We fund our service partly by providing training courses, and partly by asking clients if they can manage to make a weekly donation for the counselling work to go towards the upkeep of the practice and premises. As a guide, we are thinking of £20 per week, but clients can tell us what they can afford. We never refuse anyone because they cannot afford a donation; we will work for free with clients who cannot afford a donation.
Counselling Approaches
Most counsellors at CCS are trained in Humanistic and Relational counselling theory and practice. There is a range of different counselling theories included in the Humanistic approach, all founded upon putting the client at the centre of the work, listening to their experiences and utilising the relationship between client and counsellor to help the client work on their problems and discover how they would like to deal with them. Many counsellors here will have been trained in Person Centred theory, where the counsellor considers the client to be the expert in their own life, and gives the space to the client to grow and develop in the way they want to, which is referred to in that theory as ‘self-actualising’. Many counsellors are trained in Integrative Counselling, where the counsellor studies many different theories and integrates an approach to the work with the client based upon what they find to be useful for that particular client. These counsellors will have a knowledge of Person Centred, Transactional Analysis, Psychodynamic Theory, Gestalt and CBT, amongst others.
What happens in the sessions?
You will meet weekly with your counsellor, and the counsellor will listen to you and what you bring, and help you to reflect upon your issues, thoughts and feelings as you seek to find your own way to deal with your problems and make your own meaning of them in relation to your life. Your counsellor will aim to try to understand your feelings, and what it is like being you – being heard in a safe space where you can say what you are thinking and feeling has a very powerful effect on working with problems.
Counselling Issues we work with
We work with a broad range of client problems, including mental health issues, and the many personal and relational difficulties that people can all face, such as bereavement, relationship problems, low self-esteem, life changes and crises, gender issues, loss, stress, traumas, abuse, anger and, of course, anxiety and depression.