My aim is to help your child make sense of life experiences or issues through talking or through creative play or art. Playing and art are natural ways of communicating and children can explore feelings and issues that they find difficult to express in other ways. What is spoken about will depend on the individual, but common themes are stress, change, loss and distressing, traumatic events.
The goal of the sessions are for your child to be more able to cope with how they are feeling, help them develop insight, emotional intelligence and above all confidence. I believe that through these sessions it will give your child an opportunity to build a relationship with myself, which will help promote positive change in them and enable them to help themselves.
I will communicate with you frequently to reassess the progress of your child. If at any point I feel that your child would benefit from other forms of help, I will not hesitate to let you know. Few of us are able to work well when we are stressed or unhappy. The impact of distressing or difficult situations can be felt even more acutely by children and young people than by adults. My experience is that young people find counselling useful in the same way as adults. My experience is that if young people are able to receive emotional support from a qualified professional they will have greater opportunity to fulfil their potential moving forward. Counselling may be for a few sessions or longer term, each session lasting no more than 45 minutes.