Full Circle Counselling

The YMCA Full Circle counselling service began in the summer of 2015 and has been operating in house for the last 9 years.

Our mission is to:

‘Enable people to develop their full potential in mind, body and spirit’

Our first service has supported:

• The clients who are already accessing support at the YMCA Bournemouth, who are often facing difficult life circumstances or events.
• Our volunteers who give up their time to support others but at times may need support themselves.
• Our staff who underpin and enable all the work at the YMCA; whom we are privileged to support, as they do so much to support others.

We believe that our services should be:

‘People-focused services which assume the intrinsic worth of every person and benefit the local community’

With this in mind, we have recently decided that our counselling service could also benefit the local community and we are excited to announce the opening of the YMCA low-cost counselling service.

Our second service is to:

• To provide support for those dealing with mental health issues or challenging life experiences in our community through offering talking therapy.
• Offer the community of Bournemouth access to affordable counselling.
• To enable those that need help to access help when they need it.

– NB Subject to a clinical assessment.

What is counselling?

Counselling is a talking therapy. It is a process where someone goes to talk to a trained professional to help with emotional issues. There are different forms of Counselling and depending on needs or suitability there will usually be a form of counselling which will fit your needs.

Counselling usually takes around fifty minutes and is mostly once a week although this can be variable dependent on circumstances. Counselling can take place face to face, online, in a group, via telephone or via email or text. Counselling can last for one session, a serious of sessions or over several months or years. Counselling could happen on your own, in a couple, part of a family or part of a group.

Counselling can help with Anxiety, Depression, Eating disorders, Bereavement, Relationship breakdowns, Low self-esteem and many more mental health concerns and life issues not exhaustive.

What doesn’t happen in Counselling.

• Counsellors don’t diagnose mental health conditions.
• Counsellors won’t tell you what to do.
• Counsellors don’t make judgements or have opinions about your concerns.
• Counsellors won’t give you misinformation or hide things from you.

Types of counselling and what we offer at the YMCA.

• At the YMCA Bournemouth we offer one to one counselling. That means that a single person will meet with a single counsellor and work together.
• We currently offer counselling to Children (11+), Young people, and Adults.
• This is a weekly face to face, online video, or telephone appointment.
• Some of the therapies that we offer are:
  Person Centred, Integrative, Cognitive Behavioural therapy and Transactional Analysis (dependent on availability).
• All our clients are given a clinical assessment prior to entering counselling, this is to assess their presenting concerns and to ensure that we can offer the right counselling provision for their needs, before being placed with a suitable counsellor.

How does it work?

After making a self-referral (via email – please see the link below) one of the counselling team will be in contact with you to arrange a counselling assessment. Once you have been assessed you will be placed with one of our counsellors. All counsellors are either qualified or in their final months of training.

Once assigned a counsellor you will meet weekly for fifty minutes. Weekly is best as it allows time to process the previous session, sometimes a lot can happen in a session and space between each session allows for the client to absorb and to think. The amount of session you need will depend on what you are bringing to counselling.

Things that you need to Know.

All counselling is confidential. Our counsellors are DBS advanced checked, insured and are members of a counselling organisation such as the B.A.C.P (British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists), NCS (National Counselling Society) and ACC (Association of Christian Counsellors) and others.

(For a full list of please see https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/accreditation.html#accept-cookies)

We are registered with the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) and follow their data protection regulations.

All our counsellors receive clinical supervision for an hour and half a month to ensure that they are working ethically and professionally and to underpin their practice.

We are currently offering face to face appointments in either Winton or Southbourne.