South Durham Counselling offer free non-time limited support sessions for as long as needed in Shildon. Unfortunately they received an email out the blue from the Clinical Commissioning Group saying their funding was ending in April!
The reasons being cuts and interestingly replication of service which is odd as it certainly isn’t replicated elsewhere and they deemed us as a specialist service. 90% of clients are Rape/ sex abuse victims or people suffering severe trauma. One of their working partners (Sex abuse and rape crisis centre have a waiting list of 12 months and state they will struggle without them as we are one of the few places in the UK to take victims of both sexes.
They are going to offer clients generic counselling which means 6-8 sessions with a counsellor who is not trained in the area and will likely cause more psychological trauma. South Durham Counselling also provide student placements to trainee counsellors in their final degree year and without this they could not qualify to enter the workforce. All Counsellors give their time for Free and two well attended community groups to try and address local social isolation They have a website www.southdurhamcounselling.org with an online petition to save the service
