50-minute counselling sessionLocation: Mercserv Room (on the ground floor of Donegal House)Counselling Guidelines:Thank you for choosing to attend an on-site counselling session with Luminate. We’re confident that you’ve taken a positive step to support your mental health and wellbeing. Counselling is not just for people in crisis or with a mental health illness. Many people can benefit from talking to professional in a safe environment about any difficulties they are facing or traumas they have experienced. As with any kind of psychological support, it is important to ensure safe practice, which is why we have set out these guidelines. For any further support or information, please contact Luminate and we would be happy to help, on hello@weareluminate.co. All of our counsellors are accredited by the British Association for Counsellors and Psychotherapists (BACP), which means they adhere to the ethical framework and follow the guidelines set by the BACP for safe practice. Anything discussed in counselling sessions will be kept confidential and will not be passed on to your manager, employer or anybody else in or outside of the company. The only occasion in which this confidentiality may be broken, is if the counsellor has genuine concern for your safety or for that of others around you.If our counsellor feels that they are in breach of the ethical guidelines at any time, they may respectfully refuse to continue providing counselling to you. An example of this may be if the counsellor has a personal connection to you or somebody close to you, or if they feel you have behaved inappropriately in any way. In this case, we would work with your employer to try and ensure you still receive appropriate support. You may want to continue seeing our counsellor on an ongoing basis, beyond the sessions that are offered to you on-site. You are welcome to arrange this directly with the counsellor, but we cannot guarantee that the counsellor will have availability to continue the sessions privately, nor can we influence the cost. In the case that the counsellor cannot accommodate you, we will recommend a range of alternative counsellors that offer a private service. Counselling is not a magic solution for curing mental illness. The recovery process can be long and complex, so unfortunately we can’t promise that counselling will resolve all mental health illness. Counselling should be part of a healthy lifestyle, involving other self-care and social support initiatives. Counselling or therapy is a collaborative process and involves a degree of openness and trust. Your counsellor is not there to tell you what to do or how to live your life, but through the collaborative process, they can help guide and support you through any difficulties you may be facing.Although we only work with fully-accredited counsellors and therapists, you may feel that our therapist or the type of therapy offered is not the right fit for you, in which case the counselling service may be counter-productive. You may want to consider looking at alternative therapy options, with the support of your employer, where possible. Our counsellors will not be available for dealing with any personal crises and will not be contactable outside of the sessions (aside from to schedule further private appointments). If you are experiencing a crisis, please contact emergency services or one of the helplines provided in the signposting document. Some of the things you may be discussing in therapy may be emotionally painful or upsetting. You may have brought up difficult memories or feelings so consider when to hold your sessions and where possible you may want to schedule in a break afterwards. Self-care should come first, so try to look after yourself in and around these sessions as much as possible. Communicating to your employer, what you may need here, may help them support you better. It's common to have a mixture of thoughts and emotions about finishing therapy. If you're worried about how you'll cope, you could discuss this with your therapist and where you feel appropriate, with your employer, where you can work out your next steps. If you feel one of our counsellors has broken the ethical guidelines set by the BACP, please inform us immediately on hello@weareluminate.co.
