Helpline: 0118 958 4033
Trust House offers free therapy services to children, young people aged 4-21 years and their parents/carers in Thames Valley, including counselling, play and art therapy and parent/carer support.
Counselling offers a safe place to explore your thoughts and feelings in a confidential setting. You decide what you want to focus on, and our counsellors will listen and never judge or criticise you. Together you will talk through your issues and come up with new options, find new ways of looking at things or get new skills to help you move forward in your life.
Play Therapy helps children and young people understand muddled feelings and upsetting events that they haven’t had the chance to sort out properly. Rather than having to explain what is troubling them, as adult therapy usually expects, children use play to communicate at their own level and at their own pace, without feeling interrogated or threatened.
Art therapy is a form of therapy that uses visual and tactile media as a means of self-expression and communication. Art therapists aim to support people of all ages and abilities to discover an outlet for often complex and confusing feelings and help them to gain self-awareness and growth.
Parent/carer support sessions look at the difficulties the child is having and how the parent/carer can support them. This can be on an individual basis or as part of a group.
We offer 50-minute sessions with the same therapist at the same time and in the same space each week. This can be face-to-face in our building in central Reading, online, by phone or occasionally in school/college.
We will be offering informal drop-ins for parents – dates to be announced – at different times and days. These are an opportunity to meet other parents that have had similar experiences and to speak with professionals who work in the field.
We also offer support groups for service users who have already received individual therapy, to explore the impact of experiencing sexual harm and ways to recover from the impact of this. These group sessions are held weekly, face-to-face at our office in Reading or online.
So that we can arrange a service we will need some information and therefore ask you to complete our referral form. If you would like to talk to someone from our office, please feel free to call or email. We can then place you on our waiting list. When a therapist becomes available, they will book you in for a first meeting. In this meeting the therapist will talk to you about what your problems are and help you to decide if our service will be able to help.
If you would like to access our children, young people and family service, please call our helpline on 0118 9584033, email support@trusthouse.org.uk or complete our referral form using the button below.
No, you do not have to do this, it is up to you to decide what you want to talk about. We will not ask you questions about what happened to you.
Sessions are weekly. We offer short to medium-term therapy, according to your needs.
We do not discuss anything that is said in therapy sessions with anyone else unless we are really worried that you or someone else is at risk. In this case we would discuss with you what we need to do.
This can be very worrying when children are young. With children under 13 years, we begin sessions with the parent/carer in the room with their child and then when the child is ready, the parent/carer waits outside the therapy room every session.
To get the most from your sessions, weekly attendance is recommended. However, we understand that things sometimes get in the way of attending appointments. We do not count these missed sessions unless they are frequent. In this case your therapist would talk to you about the reasons for missed sessions.
You can bring someone to your first meeting but otherwise we do not allow other people to accompany you if you are over 13 years of age unless there is a special reason for this.
Only assistance animals are allowed into our building.
We believe that people can make their own decisions about what is right for them. Our counsellors are trained to help you make the right choices for you, however hard some choices may be. Our counsellors may offer useful information and can help you clarify how and why you feel the way you do.
There’s no excuse for rape or sexual abuse. Please call the helpline on 0118 958 4033
