One-to-one counselling
Individual counselling
We normally aim to offer you an initial one-to-one counselling session within two weeks of contacting us.
However, demand for Individual Counselling is currently very high and for this reason we are moving to a system of pre-assessment screening, where we will invite you to have a 20 minute if you have requested individual counselling. This will establish if an assessment is necessary.
Ordinarily, at this time, assessments and individual counselling will ONLY be offered if you are at risk of failing your course or you are experiencing psychological difficulty which causes us to believe you may be a danger to yourself or others
Assessments will not be offered to students who have suspended studies as we will only offer regular counselling to those who are currently studying.
Please note you do not need to attend an assessment, or meet any of the above criteria to be able to access our groups and workshop programme, to make use of on line cbt for depression and low mood (‘Beating the Blues’) or to use our self help pages or resource library.
We will contact you again shortly to offer an initial 20 minute screening appointment to suit your available times. We would ordinarily hope to offer you this appointment within ten working days during term time periods. If from what you have read you don't feel you meet the criteria above we would be grateful if you would let us know as soon as possible so that we can remove you from our waiting list.
If you would like to pursue alternative sources of Individual Counselling you might wish to visit our other counselling services page.
If you are concerned about your present psychological state you may also wish to visit your GP.
If you are invited to an initial assessment session, a counsellor will explain what to expect, will clarify the limits to confidentiality, will ask for your agreement about attendance and gather what your preferences are. You will be encouraged to describe your situation and the issues you face so that together you can arrive at an agreed course of action.
Some people find that this single opportunity to talk through issues provides enough support for them to carry on with their lives without further help. Others can be signposted to sources of self help or other agencies. We can set up referrals to workshops, group work and individual sessions from this initial session.
The counsellor helped me realise (in one short session) that I was a human being
If you decide you want further one-to-one sessions of counselling, and you meet the criteria above, we will try to arrange this with the same counsellor you saw initially but there are times when this may not be possible or it may be more suitable for you to see someone else. You might have to wait 4-6 weeks for this one-to-one work to start at times when the service is busy, but we try to prioritise waiting times according to the urgency of the issues you bring.
Once regular one-to-one work begins you will be able to discuss the number of sessions that seem suitable and depending on your situation and on the present availability of counsellors, you may be seen for a few sessions, a six week contract or longer term work.
Individual counselling sessions last for 50 minutes.