Towards the end of 2023, Welcare in East Surrey were approached by Lorraine from Reigate Community Counselling Centre (RCCC) with a fantastic offer. RCCC had been given a significant donation which they wanted to use for something other than their ongoing activities. They decided that they wanted to offer Welcare parents some free counselling sessions – and, of course, we were delighted to accept.
The sessions started in January 2024 with 3 parents from Welcare families. The parents were offered a one-off session with the counsellor, to see if they would find it useful, and then if they chose to proceed would get a series of 6 weekly sessions.
Since then, we have had 10 parents complete 6 sessions with the wonderful, compassionate and patient counsellor. We are very are very fortunate and grateful that the work is still ongoing with 3 parents in the middle of their sessions, and several on the waiting list.
We are blown away by the generosity of RCCC and their desire to support the wider community in this way. It has had such a positive impact on the parents, helping them to understand and reflect, as well as identify strategies to help them manage better for themselves and their children.
One Welcare Family Support Worker says “One mother is having to provide considerable and constant emotional support for her children as well as having her own issues. Seeing the counsellor weekly is space and time just for her. She is not yet in a place to dig deeper into her own complex issues (and this couldn’t be done in the 6 weeks that are allocated), but the counsellor is using the time flexibly in a way that works for and supports the parent where she is now. It is making a big difference to the mother’s ability to cope”.
Many of the families we have helped through this offer need specialist mental health interventions and are on the waiting lists for these services, but having counselling now enables them to manage the waiting period more successfully.
What a fantastic impact and THANK YOU RCCC!
