Online Counselling with Anne

So that you know a bit about the way our work online together might happen, here is some practical information. Please do ask about anything that either is not clear or which I have omitted to mention.

I am a registered practitioner with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, and work to their Ethical Framework. You may be interested to know more about this and can find it on their website at www.bacp.co.uk

I suggest that initially we agree to work together for four weeks. During that time you can send me as many emails as you wish, although I can only guarantee to respond to them within three working days (excluding weekends) . That means that if you send several close together, you may find that I reply to them all in one email. I will email you an acknowledgement that I have received them. It would also be useful if you would also acknowledge my emails, then we know that the technology is working. If you wish to extend our contract at the end of four weeks, we can discuss whether you would like to contract for another four weeks, or make it more open ended.

As an alternative to email exchanges, we are able to use weekly MSN Messenger to talk in 'real time' if you wish to do so. Sessions would be up to an hour long. This is something we can discuss together in our emails.

The current fees are £20 per email exchange, or £40 per MSN session (up to one hour). You can pay me by cheque, or by bank transfer. Many clients prefer to pay in a 4 exchange block ahead of contacts, rather than paying for each individual exchange as we go along.

The content of our work together is confidential, within these exceptions. The first is that all counsellors in the UK are in regular confidential supervision, where we discuss our work to ensure that we are working in the most effective way to enable our clients to reach their goals. Also, if I believe that you are at risk, or putting others at risk, I might need to break confidentiality. There are exceptional circumstances regarding legal matters which I would be under an obligation to disclose.

Working online means that there are occasionally technology problems. If you are unable to get online, you may wish to leave me a telephone message on the number I will give you if you decide to work with me. You also may want to give me a means of contacting you if I cannot get online. If I do not hear from you with 48 hours of sending you an email, I will resend it, in case there has been a problem. If I then do not hear from you, I will assume that you do not wish to continue working with me. However, if at any point during our work together, you decide that you wish to end our contract, obviously I would very much appreciate it if you would let me know this.

If you think you would like to work online with me, send me an email to anne@counsellingassociates.org and we can set up a contract together.

Anne Stokes