Life Changes Counselling

Life Changes Community Counselling Service was originally founded in 2006 to provide vitally-needed counselling for adults who might otherwise be excluded because of finance or shortfall in counselling and mental health service provision. With this in mind, we sustain and fund the services we offer from grant donations, client donations, commercial sponsorship and other income streams.

A primary aim of our quality statement is to provide a transparency of working practices, skills, expertise and experience which underpin Life Changes Counselling, a registered charity, compliant with relevant legislation and guidance from the Charity Commission and Companies House.

Life Changes Counselling strives to make the most of its assets by building a culture of excellence. It is governed by a Board of Trustees/Directors. The Trustees/directors are passionate about the organisation’s mission to deliver high quality, affordable, one to one counselling, to people from the age of 18, who live in Southampton and the surrounding area. At the core of our work is the opportunity to reflect on life, its transitions and challenges; working with clients in a non-judgemental, confidential and ethically safe environment. Counselling provision takes the shape of an integrative approach and we support our counsellors in practising their chosen theoretical approach. Clients self-refer to Life Changes Counselling, many on the recommendation of their GPs or other health and social care professionals/agencies.

The Board meets at regular intervals throughout the year in order to monitor our counselling provision against specific indicators and quality measures, including: CORE10, client evaluation, CPD for supervisors, waiting times, unkept or cancelled appointments, in addition to key policies, including: Confidentiality, Safeguarding, GDPR/Privacy Notice, Complaints, EO, Grievance and counselling offered policy. Monitoring and evaluation is further enhanced through: fortnightly supervision, team meetings, anecdotal feedback, annual counsellor/supervisor/Counselling Coordinator appraisal.

Life Changes Counselling recognises that its clients are the foundation of its service. Our relationship with them is based on the principle of mutual respect. We aim to build on what we do well through training, supervision, appraisal, audit, service review, evaluation and valuable client feed-back and in so doing to develop our service to respond to changing needs.

Life Changes Counselling also respects and values the contributions, experience and skills of its volunteer counsellors, supervisors and trustees. We are committed to working together to support and develop our volunteers in ways that enhance their professional practice and individual abilities. All Life Changes counsellors and supervisors uphold professional codes of practice. Many of the counsellors have specialist specific training to offer counselling to those who have experienced domestic abuse. In this, Life Changes Counselling has the support of the Hampshire Constabulary and the Southampton City Council Independent Domestic Abuse Advisors.

Life Changes Counselling is an organisational member of the British Association of Counselling & Psychotherapy (BACP). In addition to this, counsellors are required to be members of a relevant professional body such as BACP/UKCP/NCP and adhere to their ethical framework. We work with a number of universities and colleges to provide supervised training placements to experienced counselling students, typically in the final stage of their degree or diploma course. All counsellors are interviewed and assessed as fully competent to offer one-to-one counselling.

Counsellors are required to carry their own individual professional indemnity insurance. Every counsellor receives regular supervision which aspires to the values, principles and moral qualities associated with the BACP ethical framework for good practice. In addition, we offer specialist training to our own counsellors and those of other counselling services.

Life Changes Counselling recognises its responsibilities for the wellbeing and stability of the communities. It aims to empower individuals to exercise their autonomy in decision making, life choices and creative problem solving.

Quality is a factor in everything we do. It’s integral to the way we think, govern, plan and deliver our service.

Latest News

AGM 8/1/2024 at 7.00pm

19 Dec, 2023

You are invited to attend LCC’s AGM on the revised date, Monday 8th January at 1900 hrs. on Zoom. We promise to pass rapidly through the boring bits and concentrate on giving all who have a stake in the organisation the opportunity to tell us how we are getting on from your point of view. Do you have any ideas how we can improve our service to our clients and /or our trainees. Are there any opportunities for the future you can inform us of. Or would you just like to meet the people who run the organisation in the (virtual) flesh? Maybe you would like to pick our brains about where we are going in the future? Perhaps best of all, would you like to join us in helping run the organisation? Whatever your position or point of view , we would certainly like to see you so drop Liz Rose an e mail at coordinator@lifechangescounselling.org.uk and we will send you a Zoom link for the meeting. In the meantime, may I wish you all the best for the festive season and a happy 2024. Philip Meakins Chairman

22/23 Chairman's Report

by PH947486 • 18 Dec, 2023

22/23 Chairman's Report

Good News!

10 Nov, 2023

LCC is pleased to announce that our Paid Counsellor Project (HiWCF) has successfully entered its second year on target. We currently have 6 of our alumni (counsellors who have worked with us and subsequently qualified) working on this project and by the end of next year, this is planned to be up to 8. Not only does this extra workforce help us keep our times from referral to treatment nicely low, the additional expertise and experience they represent is helping our ambition to constantly improve the service we offer to our clients. On a separate issue, our venture into providing a service to the NHS has now also been running for a year. The PCN (GP consortium) for whom we provide the service is very pleased with it and has extended the contract for another year. Well done to all involved for making such a success of this venture.

Annual Report 21/22 and Financial Update Nov 2023

by PH947486 • 10 Nov, 2023

Annual Report 21/22 and Financial Update Nov 2023

Life Changes Counselling has provided low-cost counselling in the Southampton area for 17 years. We

November 2022 Statement and Funding

28 Nov, 2022

Life Changes Counselling has provided low-cost counselling in the Southampton area for 17 years. We charge according to ability to pay and until recently have been able to run the organisation with clients paying between £0 and £30. Our target for seeing clients is 6 weeks from referral (currently significantly less than this). Since the summer the number of clients unable to pay anything at all has overwhelmed our business model and we have begun to run through our reserves in an unsustainable way. In August the trustees, with deep misgivings, decided that in order to balance the books we would temporarily stop taking new clients unless they were able to pay £35 a session, reducing it to a minimum of £15 if there was significant financial stress. Grant applications were made to fund those who were unable to afford these revised fees. To put these fees into perspective private counselling costs £50 and upwards, whilst NHS and large charities cost out at £100 to £150 a session.

Great South Run - Oct 2022

07 Nov, 2022

Ed's amazing achievement in the Great South Run - October 2022

AGM 27/11/2022

10 Oct, 2022

The Trustees of Life Changes Counselling invite you to the Annual General Meeting to review the year April 2021-March 2022 and onwards. It will now take place on Sunday 27th November @ 7.00pm on Zoom After the formal business of the meeting, we would like to turn this into your opportunity to contribute your ideas as to how we can continue to improve our organisation. To allow us to plan, please RSVP to: coordinator@lifechangescounselling.org.uk

Affordable Counselling

26 Aug, 2022

Our routine financial audit over the last 3 months has revealed that the average donation being received has reduced significantly below that required to continue to fund the work of the Charity. We will continue to see existing counselling clients however the trustees have decided in order to enable the charity to maintain its counselling offering to the community, for the next 3 months we will set a minimum of £20 - £30 per session for new clients who are in financial stress and set a revised payment of £30 - £35 per session for those who are not. The trustees are acutely aware (and very uncomfortable) that there will be some clients who will be financially impacted by this decision and consequently be excluded from our service; the coming winter may well exacerbate this further. As a result, we are currently actively in the process of applying for grants in order to revert to our Charities mission of offering affordable counselling to everyone in the community. We are also looking at ways to increase throughput and thus achieve economies of scale. In the medium term we have plans for new income streams which will also help us return to a consistent and sustainable financial level offering counselling to all. We would like to emphasise this is not a decision we have taken lightly. To put this into context similar services provided by the NHS are charged to the taxpayer at up to 10 times this amount - and may have waiting times of a year or more. We plan to be back to normal in a far smaller time scale.

An exciting change for LCC

06 Jun, 2022

Life Changes Counselling has for 17 years provided counselling for the Southampton area using voluntary counsellors in their final year of training. On qualifying many of our alumni leave us to set up their own practice or for paid employment. Increasing demand, complexity of presentation and a knock-on effect of increased wait times has meant that we have for some time been looking at ways of expanding our work to meet these challenges by paying our alumni. That way we hope to retain our more experienced counsellors for longer and help their transition to the world of paid employment - a win win situation. Best of all, our clients will benefit from a more experienced and stable work force. Expansion of a predominantly voluntary organisation is potentially a risky undertaking, risking overextending a limited budget and that other, equally important budget - the goodwill and energy of those that work within the organisation. We are thus thrilled to announce a successful bid for a 3-year development grant from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Community Foundation which will enable us to make this transition to paying our alumni in a planned, financially protected way without breeching either. The plan is to introduce 2 paid counsellors every 6 months until we reach a maximum of 8. In this way these experienced folk will not only be a resource to help with more complex presentations but should help with our drive to get our waiting times back down below 6 weeks.

New Base/Counselling Rooms

06 Jun, 2022

Life Changes has a new base in Southampton. One of the dilemma’s that we have struggled with here at Life Changes is when and how to return to face-to-face counselling. The pandemic has yo-yo’d back and forth, and various offers of “free” accommodation have eventually come to naught. Entering into a commitment for rented rooms before the pandemic “allowed’ us to utilise them would add an unacceptable financial burden on our ultra-low-cost charity - but we have finally taken the plunge and rented three rooms in Carlton Crescent in the very centre of Southampton. Let’s hope the pandemic has indeed reached the stage where this investment is justified. This does not mean that we won’t continue to offer online counselling. The ability to talk and see each other from the comfort or security of our own dwelling, despite being many miles apart, has been a revelation, and for many reasons there will always be people who would prefer to access their counselling in this way. The choice will remain with our clients, but for those who would prefer to work across the room with their counsellor, we hope these rooms will provide a pleasant environment which will help the process along.

"The way she seemed to get me, understand me and then help me see. I’d just like to say thank you. It’s a great service you provide."
"Being able to manage my anger. The counsellor was brilliant at understanding and helping me move on."
"Your service has really made a difference, I feel so much better. I would recommend Life Changes to anyone suffering depression as it really works".
"Being able to talk about things (past experiences). I felt safe to talk about things that have been upsetting me for years. "
"My counselling is a stepping stone to a longer term recovery, and it was nice to NOT be set endless paper exercises after each session. I would like to thank my counsellor and all the staff, words are not able to express how valuable and helpful these sessions have been."
"Being listened to, challenged on core beliefs. Thank you so much for your help, I’m extremely grateful. "
"Understanding how my thoughts and feelings impacted my life and developing coping strategies. My counsellor added some additional sessions to help with my return to work. I would thoroughly recommend Life Changes to anyone going through a difficult time. "
Hello! I wanted to say thank you for everything LCC did for me. I am doing so much better now and I attribute it to you, I am in an undergraduate course and I’m doing well so far and I’m hoping to go on to do a masters here. I’m still on the autism wait list but the uni is aware and has good resources. I never thought I'd be able to do this, what you are doing is very impactful and I’m not sure where I would be right now if I hadn’t had our sessions - Thank you again. Kind regards, P

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Life Changes Counselling is a Registered Charity offering

short-term, affordable, one-to-one counselling to meet needs that would not otherwise be met in the communities in which we operate.

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Southampton

07444 001845

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Registered Charity no: 1114553. Company limited by guarantee no: 05750613.
Organisational member of the British Association of Counselling & Psychotherapy no: 118563
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Life Changes Counselling

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