Who are we?

We are a specialist service, made up of psychological professionals, including Psychological Therapists and Clinical Psychologists.

We are a psychological therapies service and work with children, young people up to age 18, parents, carers and other agencies to understand, help and cope with a wide variety of emotional, behavioural, developmental and relationship difficulties.

Our service is private and confidential.

What do we help with?

We aim to help children, young people, parents and carers to find solutions to concerns they have, for example when they are experiencing:

  • Difficulties in relationships
  • Emotional difficulties, such as low mood or feelings of anxiety or anger
  • Difficulties in adjusting to illness or medical conditions
  • Impact of traumatic experiences

As we are a secondary level, specialist service, families are generally required to have accessed some level of primary support prior to being referred to our service.

There are some things that we are unable to support with:

  • We do not prescribe medication
  • We do not provide urgent care or assessment and management of self-harming or suicidal behaviour.
  • We do not provide assessment of neurodevelopmental differences, such as ADHD or Autism Spectrum Condition.
  • We do not provide training to schools or work on solely school-based issues, such as Emotionally-Based School Avoidance.

If you need support with these issues, you can find further information on our website about services that can help.

How do we help?

We will listen carefully to you and your child’s concerns and how they influence your lives. We will try to understand your situation and decide together what might be a helpful way forward. We aim to help by stepping back and looking at a situation in new ways. We are skilled in talking about sensitive issues with adults and children and often work by asking questions that aim to bring out the best in people, not to criticise or judge. Your referrer or doctor does not need to know everything we talk about but we will write to them from time to time to keep them informed of your progress.

We are very rarely able to offer a quick fix to complex situations but we can spend time working out the best way forward with you. Some people are seen for a small number of appointments, whereas others may be seen for longer, depending upon the situation.

What will happen at the first appointment?

When you and your child are referred to our service, you will be sent a letter asking you to contact the service to arrange a mutually convenient initial assessment appointment. This appointment will last up to one hour and will generally be offered as a video appointment.

We can tell you more about our service and answer any questions that you have. We will discuss the reason for your child’s referral. We will also gather information about your child and family in general, their experience of school, early development, other services involved, etc. This will help us to build a picture of the difficulties you are facing.

Depending upon the age of your child, we may invite them to stay for the duration of the appointment or meet them for the first part of the appointment only.

We will then decide together whether we can help you with the difficulties, what changes you would like to make and whether you would like to work with us. If we agree that our service can be helpful at this time, we will add your child to our waiting list for further input.

If we decide that it is not the best way forward, we can discuss alternative services.

Attendance

Demand for our service is very high. Therefore, if you are unable to attend or decide that you do not want to attend for any reason, please let us know as soon as possible. We can then offer the appointment to another family. If you do not call us to cancel your appointment, your child may be discharged from our service and require a re-referral.

What have other parents / carers said about our service?

“It’s good that they listen to all your concerns. The service is so important and really helped my son and us as a family.”

“I felt that she was very easy to talk to. Always professional and caring in her approach and she helped to reassure me and guide me.”

“Someone was willing to listen and advise on areas my child has difficulty in.”

“Our son has come a long way with this help.”

More information

If you would like to learn more about us, you can access our website.