What is counselling?

Counselling is a talking therapy, which is an activity voluntarily entered into by people who want to explore and understand issues in their lives which may be causing difficulty, pain or mixed emotions.

Counselling is an opportunity to talk to someone in confidence about anything that is worrying you. Counselling is an appointment with the same counsellor every week who will listen to and help you explore how you are feeling.

• Relationship issues
• Managing anxiety
• Exploring feelings of anger, low mood and confusion
• Managing emotions, responses and reactions
• Bereavement and grief
• Bullying
• Problems at home or in school
• Managing big life events
• Substance use
• Exploring gender and/or sexuality

YES Confidentiality Policy:

Using our counselling service is strictly confidential. No information will be passed to any person or agency without consent of the young person. The only circumstances in which we would have to disclose information is:

When the young persons safety and welfare is thought to be at serious risk

OR

When the safety and welfare of someone else is at risk.

Our counselling sessions are funded via our charity called ‘The Jersey Youth Trust’. We are constantly fundraising to ensure we continue to run the service. If you would like to support the YES project to continue to provide free counselling to young people you can donate here.

How to start counselling with us:

Any young person age 13 and above can register for counselling without a parent/carer. We will not inform a young persons parent/carer that they are having counselling with us or that they have visited without the young persons consent, unless there is a safeguarding concern / risk of harm to the young person.

Young people age 12 will need a parent/carer present to register for counselling.

To start counselling with us, we ask each young person to meet with a Youth Worker to talk through what support they need as well as completed our registration form. We do have a waiting list to start counselling appointments which varies in length throughout the year. If you would like to know how long the waiting list is, please ask a Youth Worker.

Please note:

A young person cannot start counselling with us if they are accessing therapy with another agency, such as a school counsellor or another therapist. This is a conflict of interest and unethical. Please call us if you are unsure or have any questions about this.