Children and Adolescent Counselling
Are you looking for support for your child?
Whilst growing up is a time of play, fun and exploration, it can be hard to navigate the many challenges that children and teens face. Often difficult feelings or experiences can be expressed through behaviours as voicing them is tricky.
Counselling can encourage exploration of these feelings, helping make sense of them and expressing them in a way that feels more manageable.
I work with children and young people providing a safe, non-judgemental space to talk about what they are finding difficult, and the issues that are important to them, whether that be family worries, friendships, anxiety, low self-esteem, or bullying.
Using a mixture of talking and creative therapies, we work at a pace that suits your child to build a trusting, therapeutic relationship. This is important so that feelings can emerge and be expressed, which we can then explore to create strategies to manage them.
I follow the BACP Ethical Guidelines for working with Children and Young People as well as the GIRFEC (Getting it right for every Child) Practice Model to safeguard Children and Young people, and to support our therapeutic work.
When working with children and teenagers my approach is that they are the clients and so boundaries around confidentiality are agreed and upheld before we start working together.
As the referral is usually made by caregivers, it is important that we too build a trusting relationship to support progress and potential change. I therefore begin with an initial consultation to talk about what has been going on for everyone and what the hopes of counselling are for the young person and their caregivers.