1:1 Assessment and Therapy Service

At times in life, we can all find ourselves feeling overwhelmed, stuck, or struggling with a particular emotional or psychological difficulty. Psychological therapy offers a space to pause, reflect, and make sense of what you are experiencing.

Our Clinical Psychologists provide a confidential and compassionate environment in which to explore the challenges you are facing. Through careful assessment and collaborative formulation, we work with you to develop a clear understanding of your difficulties and the patterns that may be maintaining them. From this shared understanding, we identify meaningful goals and support you to develop practical skills and strategies that promote lasting change.

Our psychologists are doctoral-level practitioners with extensive training in evidence-based psychological therapies and experience working with children, young people, and adults. We tailor our approach to your individual needs, drawing on a range of therapeutic models to support meaningful progress.

Seeking support can feel like a significant step, particularly if you have been managing difficult thoughts, emotions, or life experiences for some time. If you are here, it may be because your usual ways of coping no longer feel sufficient, or because you are looking for a different way forward.

We aim to make the process of accessing support clear, supportive, and straightforward. The information below outlines what you can expect from our service and how we work.

We support children, young people and adults experiencing a wide range of emotional and psychological difficulties including:

• Anxiety disorders (generalised, separation, specific phobias, health anxiety, social anixiety)
• High stress (chronic or acute) or emotional overwhelm
• School-related difficulties (school-related anxiety, exploring barriers to attendance)
• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
• Traumatic experiences that do not meet threshold for PTSD (single event or repeated/ongoing)
• Living alongside chronic health conditions (including anxiety associated with medical procedures, adjusting to and acceptance of a new diagnosis, recovering from medical-related trauma, reintegration to school or work following illness) 
• Relationship difficulties
• Depression & low mood
• Returning to work after stress, burnout, or absence
• Specialist wellbeing support for educators (workshops, reflective groups, supervision, 1:1 staff support sessions)
• Parenting challenges, including co-parenting after separation 
• Sleep difficulties Problematic relationships with food (not difficulties that meet threshold for an Eating Disorder)
• Managing emotions
• Feeling stuck, lacking direction, or struggling to cope, you do not need a diagnosis to seek support.

We also work within multi-disciplinary teams and alongside case managers as part of treatment rehabilitation in medico-legal cases.

If your difficulty isn’t listed, please feel free to get in touch, we are always happy to explore whether we can help or signpost you to someone who can.

We draw from a range of evidence-based psychological treatment approaches, including 

• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), 
• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) 
• Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) 
• Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR)
• Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT)  

To find out more about these approaches head to the ‘treatment approaches’ page by clicking on the menu at the top of this page.

Psychological therapy usually begins with an initial assessment where we explore your current concerns, your background, and what you hope might change. This helps us develop a shared psychological understanding of your difficulties and identify helpful next steps.

Sessions provide a reflective and supportive space to explore thoughts, emotions, patterns and experiences. Depending on your needs, therapy may involve developing new coping strategies, processing difficult experiences, building emotional awareness, or reconnecting with values and goals that feel important to you.

Step One: Free Initial Consultation Telephone Call (20 minutes)

If you are considering therapy, the first step is to get in touch.  We can arrange an initial telephone consultation call to understand what you are looking for and discuss whether our service is the right fit for you.  

Following this, we will agree together whether further assessment and therapy would be helpful and disc the most appropriate next steps.  

Our aim is to ensure that you feel informed, supported, and comfortable with the process from the outset.  If we are not the right service to support you, we will try to signpost you to an alternative service or talk through other options.

Step Two: Psychological Assessment Sessions

If we are able to offer support and you feel like we are a good fit for you or your child you will then be offered one extended (90-minute) or two 50-minute assessment sessions, depending on the clinician’s model.  In your initial assessment we will explore the difficulties you would like to work on, set measurable, realistic and time-focused treatment goals, and develop a treatment plan to support in creating the change you would like to see.

The assessment focuses on:

• getting to know you (or your child) beyond the difficulties
• understanding your context, strengths, support systems, and daily life
• mapping the challenges that have brought you to therapy
• identifying your treatment goals
• assessing any current risk to you or others and developing a plan to address this where necessary 
• developing a collaborative psychological understanding of the difficulties you have explored (called a formulation)
• discussing the therapeutic approaches most suited to your needs and informed by the psychological understanding and formulation

You may be asked to complete questionnaires to provide a baseline for progress.

By the end of assessment, you and your clinician will have a shared understanding of the difficulties (a formulation) and a clear treatment plan.

When therapy might not proceed?

If more specialist support is needed, or if significant risk is identified, we will talk this through with you and help you find the appropriate service.

Step Three: Psychological Treatment Sessions

If assessment indicates that psychological therapy is appropriate, you will be offered a block of sessions, usually six at a time, to work towards your goals, with regular reviews of progress.  

Therapy is:

• Time-limited,
• Collaborative
• Will involve practicing skills and making behavioural changes outside of sessions
• Tailored to your needs
• Focused on helping you build confidence and independence in using new skills and strategies explored in sessions.