You may be feeling down or anxious. You may have lost someone you love or are feeling uncertain about the future of a relationship. Perhaps you are trying to recover from past trauma or struggling to find a way out of a current challenging situation. Perhaps you simply feel that you aren’t living the life you want to lead?
Counselling can offer support for a range of different needs and challenges and provides a safe and confidential space for you to talk to a trained counsellor about your difficulties and concerns. You and your counsellor will work together to explore your thoughts, feelings and behaviours so you can develop a better understanding of yourself and others. Counselling can be a process of growth and self-discovery and our counsellors will support you in finding ways to make constructive changes in your life – whether that’s making effective life changes or learning helpful ways of coping with your problems.
You do not have to be in crisis or on the verge of one before choosing to seek counselling. Counselling is for everyone who feels they would benefit from a safe and confidential space to talk.
Some of the concerns we often work with are anxiety, bereavement, depression and stress.
Our counselling centres provide an affordable counselling service to people in our local communities and beyond. We aim to make counselling accessible and affordable by offering a reasonable fee structure. All of our counsellors are professionally trained and their work is supported by clinical supervisors.
If you do not live within proximity to one of our centres or are unable to access support for health and other reasons, telephone and video counselling will allow you to attend counselling in a space of your choosing. Whilst the remote experience will be different to the traditional counselling setting, the work is done under the same robust ethical and clinical standards.
We accept self-referrals from individuals aged from 18 years. Organisations who wish to refer employees, clients or service users, please email foundation@counsellingfoundation.org and we will call you back to discuss your referral.
Once you have made contact with us, you will be sent a Registration Pack.
We may not be the right service for you. If we believe that we are unable to support you appropriately or provide you with the specialist treatment you need or if we do not have sufficient funding available, we will signpost you to other services which might meet your needs more effectively.
Once your application is approved, we will invite you for a first appointment, known as an assessment session. If, after the assessment, you choose to continue with counselling and we feel we can offer you support, you will be allocated a counsellor for your ongoing sessions.
Ongoing counselling sessions will take place on the same day and time each week unless agreed otherwise by you and your counsellor. It is important to consider your ability to maintain an ongoing weekly commitment when seeking counselling. We offer weekly sessions of 50 minutes per session.
We operate a sliding scale of fees according to your annual household income. Our subsidised fees from £20-£35 per session are only available to residents of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. This enables us to offer low costs to those in our communities with more limited income. Our standard fees from £40 per session are available to anyone living in the UK. The below table is a guide.
Please be aware that our counselling service can be in high demand and may depend on the availability of grants and funding.
1 College Yard
Lower Dagnall Street
St Albans
AL3 4PA
Tavistock Yard
58 Tavistock Street
Bedford
MK40 2RD
Bishops College
Churchgate, Cheshunt
Waltham Cross
EN8 9XQ
Hilde Eccles House
70 – 72 Princess Street
Luton
LU1 5AT
Springfield House Community Centre
24 High Street
Stevenage
SG1 3EJ
Locations
