Counselling service for parents of children with complex needs.
What is counselling and how can it help?Families whose children have complex needs and learning disabilities face enormous challenges. Counselling can offer you a safe space to express feelings and thoughts about these experiences. Counselling focuses on your own needs as a parent and helps to identify ways of coping with difficult experiences.
Our aim is to help with experiences such as coping with diagnosis, disability, change, isolation, loss and bereavement. We offer ‘talking therapy’, creative and arts based therapy and 'mindfulness' courses. Read more in our Counselling for Parent Carers leaflet (PDF 2.83mb).
The counselling service at Seaside View is open to individual parents and couples (based in Brighton & Hove) whose child has complex needs and a learning disability. Parents whose children do not quite fit these criteria but are supported by Seaside View can sometimes be seen, if the waiting list allows. For example this could include parents whose children have no clear diagnosis or who have autism and no additional learning disability. Priority is given to families with a child with a life-limiting condition or where there are child protection concerns.
Counselling for children and young people is available through the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service.
Counselling sessions take place at the Seaside View Child Development Centre, Brighton General Hospital, Elm Grove, Brighton, BN3 3EW. The building is fully accessible to people with disabilities and those using wheelchairs. Initially up to 12 sessions are offered. Longer term support and future re-referral is available by negotiation.
Anything that you say in the counselling sessions will be kept confidential. We only pass on information if you tell the counsellor that you or someone else is at risk of serious harm. The counsellor will let you know if this needs to happen.
Please call Jane Steeples (Counsellor), on the confidential number below, to arrange an initial assessment appointment.
Tel: 01273 265787 (Monday mornings and Wednesdays) or email: SC-Tr.BGH-seasideview@nhs.net
To enable you to talk more openly and to focus on your own needs, it is recommended that children do not attend appointments with you.
Sessions take place at
Seaside View Child Development Centre
Brighton General Hospital
Elm Grove
Brighton
BN3 3EW