What are your fees for counselling?
For individuals I currently charge £50 per session and sessions last 60 minutes each. For couples work I charge £80 for 90 minute sessions.
I accept payment by online/mobile banking, by PayPal, or by company invoice. Fees may also be paid in Euro, in which case my fees are the Euro equivalent of the above.
If you’re a trainee counsellor/therapist needing a training therapist let’s talk about a reducing fees in a way that might help with training costs.
I’m registered as a healthcare provider by certain healthcare insurers so, if you have a policy that covers psychological therapies, I may be able to invoice these providers directly. Let’s talk about this at the beginning of our work – you may need to get a ‘claim reference’ from your insurer and check any policy excesses.
How do we make a start?
The simplest way to begin is to send me an email using the contact form at the footer of each page. It’s useful if you can say a little about how I might help, and give some indication of your availability.
I aim to respond to emails as soon as I can to arrange an introductory session (without fee). I would usually set aside about an hour for this session.
This introductory session might be described as an ‘assessment’. My idea is that we’ll each be making an assessment.
I don’t have lots of formal assessment questions, I’ll simply be asking; “Can I be of genuine help in this situation?”.
And, I guess, you might be asking yourself; “Does this feel OK?” or “Is Richard the right person to be working with?” etc.
At the close of our introductory session I’ll offer some ideas about how I believe I might help. Or, if I don’t feel able to offer genuine help, I’ll do my best to offer alternative places to seek support.
There is no immediate need or pressure for you to decide whether you want to continue with sessions. I’m happy for you to take time to reflect after this first meeting, then contact me with your decision.
Here are a couple of links where you can download a useful BACP leaflet about What to Expect from a first counselling session or see my ‘Blogpost on Our First Meeting’.
What times are sessions available?
I have a spread of days and times to meet most needs, and I can usually be flexible around e.g. shift patterns or school holidays. I have slots available on weekday mornings, afternoons and some evenings and also most Saturday morning. My current availability is updated at the foot of this website, after the contact form.
How often do we have appointments?
Having weekly sessions is found to be an effective way forwards which is also easy to plan for.
Our weekly session may act as an anchor-point, a source of insight or relief, a space to reflect or process… However, in reality, much of the client’s work is done ‘in the week’, outside our session, as a natural process of integration which proceeds in its own way. It would be grandiose of a therapist to believe that he or she ‘makes changes’ in those 60 minutes.
Weekly meetings are an effective way to offer momentum to this process of change by maintaining our therapeutic relationship. Meeting more frequently does not necessarily make the process ‘quicker’. But meeting less frequently than weekly may mean a little too much ‘distance’ in our relationship, especially at the beginning.
How long will counselling take?
When we look at counselling services provided by e.g. Employee Assistance Programs or the NHS we often find that 6 to 8 weekly sessions are offered as a minimum. So this is an interesting guideline figure to the minimum number of sessions that are considered therapeutically useful, and I would agree with that.
Where we are dealing with issues that have their roots in early-life (such as addictions or self-harm) a realistic view is that our work may need to last for a good number of months in order to make a lasting change.
Broadly speaking, this longer-term work is usually described as ‘psychotherapy’.
OK, but what actually happens?
One-to-one therapy could be described as two people having a very particular kind of dialogue. The dialogue explores;
- what’s happening for us in our lives
- what’s happened in the past
- what’s happening right now in the room
The ways in which we might explore these experiences might be through;
- checking out what we’re thinking, our cognitive life
- checking out what we’re feeling, or our emotional responses
- wondering about what we’re remembering
- checking in with our somatic life, what our body is saying
Our relating is unlike most relationships we have in the world because;
- I offer you my full attention
- I offer to attune empathically to your experience, to listen deeply to what it’s like to ‘walk in your shoes’
- I attempt to be completely genuine in my response to what I hear.
- I offer all this without judgement
Throughout, our process is ‘contracted‘ i.e. it is agreed between us what we’ll work on and the direction we’ll take.
In this video (around 10 mins) I describe one way in which counselling can bring something new and useful to a difficult situation;
Richard, what’s your training, experience and background?
I began my counsellor training at York St. John where the emphasis was on Person-Centred Counselling. After this I decided to focus on Transactional Analysis and trained at Leeds Psychotherapy Training Institute then at The Ellesmere Centre in Hull.
I began practising at The Haven Counselling Centre in Hull in 2010. During 2012 I began to practise at The Ellesmere Centre in Hull and at my current practice in York.
I am a member of The British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy and as such I’m bound by the ethical frameworks of this organisation… Read More about my practice…