Our occupational health counsellors are all fully qualified therapists who can provide psychological support to staff.
Specific areas that therapy can support staff with include:
- Mental health conditions such as anxiety or depression.
- Coping with physical health conditions such as cancer, infertility
- Challenging life events such as bereavement or work related stress
- Challenging emotions such as anger, low self esteem
- Other issues such as sexual identity
- Conflict Management
What to expect from counselling
Initially, you may be asked to attend a wellbeing assessment which is an assessment with a qualified clinician where your support needs will be assessed and you will then be referred appropriately. More information about wellbeing assessments can be found here.
Once you have been assigned to a counsellor, your initial counselling session will involve the counsellor completing a short assessment with you, to ensure that counselling is still the right fit for you. This will also be where you can discuss how you would like sessions to take place, and begin to build a rapport with your counsellor.
Your counselling sessions will be a space for you to open up about your thoughts and feelings in a safe, non-judgemental environment. The counsellor will listen and support you, and will not offer their own advice or criticise you in any way. The aim of counselling is to help you to gain understanding and clarity on your feelings and thought processes, which can lead to acceptance and being more able to cope with whatever you may be experiencing. Counselling can sometimes bring up some challenging and upsetting feelings, but this is normal and the therapist will support you through these emotions.
Counselling appointments are confidential and no information will go back to HR or your manager.
We offer up to 6 counselling sessions, each session being 50 minutes long. The counselling can take place on the phone, via video call or face to face.
To access counselling, you can ask your manager to refer you, or you can self-refer for a wellbeing assessment by emailing the wellbeing helpline on wellbeinghelpline@rctcbc.gov.uk or calling 01443 424100