Adult Counselling Service

You can refer to the single point of access yourself, you do not need to go through your GP or another professional. You can make your initial referral over the telephone by calling NHS Sunderland Talking Therapies on: 01915665454 or via their website’s online referral form here.

After you have made your initial referral to NHS Sunderland Talking Therapies, they will arrange for you to have an initial assessment (triage) appointment. If you have made your referral via their website, they will be in touch with you over the phone (sometimes via an unknown number) to arrange this appointment.

The telephone triage will take approximately 30 minutes. It is important that you are in a quiet and confidential place where you can talk freely.

The therapist will ask you some questions about how you are currently feeling and this will help to work out if NHS Sunderland Talking Therapies is the right service for you and if so which treatment may be most helpful e.g. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Groups or Counselling. They will then refer you to the most appropriate service to support you at this time, this may be with themselves, back to us here at Washington Mind, or to another service.

NHS Sunderland Talking Therapies follow the ’matched care model’, which means we will offer you an evidence based treatment (as per NICE guidelines) that is recommended for the difficulties you are experiencing.

There are a range of different treatments for people with mild to moderate common mental health problems as described here

They may refer you for counselling and depending on your location, preferences and availability, you may see us or one of our partners

• Sunderland Counselling Service
• Sunderland Mind
• Washington Mind

While you are deciding or waiting for an appointment you may want to start looking at what you can do yourself. Click here for a range of self help materials.

The first session is important for establishing a sense of comfort and trust between you and your counsellor. Boundaries, confidentiality, and the counselling contract will be discussed.

You’ll discuss your reasons for seeking counselling and what you want to get out of counselling. The counsellor will spend time getting to know you. They may ask you questions about:

• Your current and past relationships
• Your past experiences
• Situations or events you find difficult
• How you feel
• How you behave
• What you think about things

The sessions can involve opening up about things that are very personal and hard to talk about, but there will never be any pressure for you to share more than you want to. The sessions are directed by you and move at a pace that you feel comfortable with.

Click here for more information from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy about what to expect in your first therapy session.

Washington Mind counsellors work in various places in the Washington and Coalfield areas. We try to be as accessible as possible and include venues such as; GP Surgeries, local charities and organisations as well as the Washington Mind office in Columbia. Please note that we are unable to offer home visits. Counselling can also take place over the phone if that is what you would prefer.

The content of counselling sessions is confidential unless something is shared with the counsellor that he/she cannot keep confidentiality about. Here are the most usual reasons:

• Where you give permission to share information

• Where a practitioner is compelled by a court of law

• Where the information is of such a gravity that confidentiality cannot be maintained, this includes where:

• It is felt there is a real possibility of harm to yourself or others

• In cases of fraud or crime

The counsellor contracts and discusses this conditional confidentiality with you at the first appointment.

Also as all counsellors have a clinical counselling supervision, they share how they work with a counselling supervisor.