Emotional & practical support from people who understand your situation

We offer 12 sessions, initially, of face to face counselling to women, men and young people over the age of 5. If the client and counsellor believe that the client would benefit from more sessions, this will be arranged. We also offer sessions for family and friends who have been affected.

As a direct result of recognition of need, we also now offer Therapeutic Crisis Interventions. People who are in crisis are generally not ready for counselling but still need professional support. For these people we offer one to three sessions with a senior counsellor within 24 hours of referral. These sessions are for ‘glueing’ people back together. They consist of normalising feelings, looking at how the brain and body react to trauma and coping strategies for dealing with flashbacks, panic attacks etc.

This then holds the person until they are ready to explore what has happened in greater depth, and also enables people to function and pursue whatever course of action they then choose.

Our helpline has gone from being open three evenings per week to five evenings and is currently taking over 2500 calls per year.

We run bi-yearly training courses for new volunteers. We have two phone lines open to the public: the Support line and the Crisis line. Our lines are open Monday to Friday 18:30 to 21:30.

We also now provide an Independent Sexual Violence Advisor service. Our ISVAs offer emotional and practical support for people considering going through the criminal justice system. They can support clients whether they have reported to the police or not and provide information regarding the police and criminal justice system. They can also support clients in accessing counselling. We currently have 3 ISVAs working with people of all ages, including children. Our children's ISVAs support children aged from 0-13 years old.

In addition to the above services, we provide workshops to secondary schools, these raise awareness of rape and sexual abuse, challenging commonly held beliefs and looking at ways for safer socialising. As a back up to these workshops we provide a dedicated support line and face to face counselling for young people aged 5 – 18 years.

We are pleased to announce that all of our services are now available to children aged 5 years old or above. Our new Children’s Counselling Service is open to all children equally whether these children are showing signs of mental health, behavioural or emotional issues, as well as difficulties with schooling, family or social interactions – working towards recovery and reducing long term damage. Please note that our Children’s Counselling Service is based in Canterbury only at this time.

Our main aim of is to provide a safe space for people in East Kent to access therapeutic and practical support in order to heal and move on from their traumatic experience. Without this, people’s lives are usually adversely affected, often experiencing extreme difficulties with relationships, education, work and parenting. By empowering people into realising truths about their abuse, working through the issues that have arisen as a result, we can thereby enable them to rebuild and sustain healthier, more productive lives.