Counselling/Talking Therapies - A Broad Church

Families, children, young people and professionals often request counselling as a solution to difficulties they are experiencing. This means different things to different people who may have a specific therapeutic approach in mind.

Counselling is most helpfully defined as help with problems of life through conversational interaction with a trained professional.  All clinicians/ associates employ these skills within their work. 

Expression through communication is the cornerstone to all assessment and intervention with children and young people with mental health difficulties. This talking, even though a specific therapy is not being delivered, often brings about significant change or improvement, in itself.

When meeting with children, young people and their families we use talking therapy/ counselling skills from a variety of therapeutic models including person-centred, psychodynamic, cognitive behavioural, systemic, problem-solving or behavioural therapies. We may adopt principles from several different models within one consultation. 

Some difficulties are more likely to be helped by a specific therapeutic approach which is when we refer / introduce children and families to associates who are specialists with higher training in a therapeutic model. These specific therapies include:

• Family Therapy
• Art Psychotherapy / Art Therapy
• Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR)
• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
• Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
• Group therapy
• Video Interaction Guidance