No! You can refer yourself, or your young person, or another family member, so long as the person who is being referred consent to the referral being made.
We accept referrals from: young people over the age of 13 as well as parent/carers of children and young people aged 5-25. You may be referred to us by a professional, such as a GP, social worker, teacher or other, but they will only do this if you have agreed to the referral.
All referrals are treated equally no matter who makes the referral.
Nothing! We offer a FREE professional counselling and wellbeing service to all.
We offer a flexible approach to the number of sessions you will be offered and try to meet your individual needs as much as possible. The majority of our young people will have between 6-12 sessions.
Once you have finished your sessions with the Youth Trust, you can come back for extra support if you need it, but you will usually be asked to wait 6 months before returning to make sure you’ve had enough time to process the work you have done so far.
Yes – what you say and do in sessions will stay between you and the Youth Trust. This includes not discussing sessions with parents, carers or teachers unless you ask us to. Confidentiality is important as it allows you to open-up and share feelings without fear of blame or judgement. It is a key part of what makes counselling and wellbeing a safe space for you to share your thoughts and feelings.
It’s important to remember that whilst your counsellor/practitioner won’t usually discuss what happens in sessions with your friends, parents, carers or teachers, you can. It is up to you who you speak to about your sessions and what you want to tell them.
Consent means that you say yes to doing something. We need you to agree to attend counselling/wellbeing sessions and will also need your permission to share information you might share with the Youth Trust. Sometimes, your therapist may suggest giving some information to another professional, but you will have the right to choose what is shared and who it is shared with. It is important to know that you are in control of the choices about how your information is shared.
If there are concerns for your safety or the safety of others, your therapist may need to share information about you with another professional, even if you do not wish to have this information shared. This is part of our job to keep you safe. Where possible we will explain who we are talking to and why. You will discuss confidentiality and consent during your first appointment.
Your Counselling/Wellbeing and Therapeutic Agreement, which you are sent before your initial assessment discusses both concepts in more detail. You can always ask your therapist or our admin staff if you have any further questions.
You will have an initial assessment with one of our counsellors. After this you will be placed on a waiting list to see one of our therapists. Once an appointment slot becomes available for you, you will be booked in for six sessions initially. These will be on the same day, at the same time for six weeks.
There may understandably be occasions when you need to cancel a session. Please just let us know with as much notice as you can. You won’t ‘lose’ that session, it will be added onto the end of your course of sessions. However, we do have a cancellation policy which states that if you miss more than 2 sessions during the course of your sessions, we cannot guarantee to hold your slot as our sessions are in high demand, and we have a long waiting list. If you completely forget to attend, please call us within 48 hours of the missed appointment to let us know you would like to continue, else your slot will be passed to another young person.
We are able to deliver sessions online, using Zoom, or over the phone, so even if you would not be able to attend in person for whatever reason, please do give us a call as we can move the session to online/phone if you would like.
