Time4Hope has been established during my fifteen years experience of working with parent/carers who have children with additional needs. I have found that the families of children who have additional needs find themselves having to go the extra mile to meet those needs in order to enhance their day to day lives, further their development and help them fulfil their potential. In doing so the parent(s) and indeed other family members can forget that they too need to take care of their own emotional well-being and this can lead to them struggling to meet their child’s needs and ultimately if left unchecked to carer burn-out. Counselling can help parents/families identify the day to day pressures that raising a child with additional needs can bring and to determine how they might better look after themselves to build up their resilience to face the challenges that life can bring. Time4Hope believe that if such an intervention were offered earlier on in the child’s journey for example at or around the time of diagnosis then the parent’s resilience could be made stronger from the outset.
Counselling for families whose children and young people have additional needs is just one aspect of my expertise, I am also able to offer counselling covering the following: bereavement; separation; divorce; low self-esteem; domestic abuse – both physical and psychological; post-traumatic stress-disorder; adult survivors of sexual abuse.
I qualified as a Person Centred Counsellor in 2012 and I am a member of the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists. Time4Hope has been helping families since sept 2012. I bring with me my own life skills as I am a mother myself to two teenage girls. This can often involve thinking on your feet (and outside the box) and a good sense of humour.
My own formative years as a first generation British Asian has given me first-hand experience of what it can be like to have to deal with confusion and conflict across cultural boundaries. My own parents showed incredible resilience, flexibility and adaptability, providing me with my own life role-models whose skills I use in my day to day personal and working life.
Should you have any questions that arise out of reading this I am more than happy to answer them via email – this can be found here.