Counselling services for parent carers (Brighton and Hove)

What is counselling and how can it help me?

Families whose children have developmental and special educational needs face enormous challenges. Counselling can offer you a safe space to express feelings and thoughts about these experiences. Counselling focuses on your own needs as a parent and helps to identify ways of coping with difficult experiences.

Our aim is to help with experiences such as coping with diagnosis, disability, change, isolation, loss and bereavement. We offer ‘talking therapy’, creative and arts based therapy and 'mindfulness' courses.

Who can use the parent counselling service at Seaside View?

The counselling service at Seaside View is open to individual parents and couples based in Brighton & Hove whose child/children are under Seaside View. Priority is given to families with a child with a life-limiting condition or where there are significant child protection concerns.

Counselling for children and young people is available through school counselling services or  Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service.

How does counselling work?

Counselling sessions usually take place at the Seaside View Child Development Centre, Brighton General Hospital, Elm Grove, Brighton, BN3 3EW. The building is fully accessible to people with disabilities and those using wheelchairs. 

During COVID-19 restrictions, the service is unable to provide sessions at Seaside View and can offer phone or video call sessions instead.

6 sessions, with the option for future re-referral, are offered. Longer term therapy is available where there is evidence of more complex trauma. Mindfulness courses run twice per year.

To enable you to talk more openly and to focus on your own needs, it is recommended that children do not attend appointments with you.

We are unable to offer home visits but can offer phone or video call sessions if it difficult for you to attend Seaside View.

Sessions are available during office hours on Mondays, Tuesdays or Thursdays.

Confidentiality

Anything that you say in the counselling sessions will be kept confidential. We only pass on information if you tell the counsellor that you or someone else is at risk of serious harm. The counsellor will let you know if this needs to happen.