Counselling and personal change programmes

• Women’s counselling
• Children & young peoples counselling
• Women’s Freedom Programme
• Young peoples personal change programme

Women’s counselling service….

Our free at the point of delivery counselling service is available to any women who has experienced domestic violence and/or abuse whether she is or has been a service user previously.

This ground breaking service has been delivered by CWA for many years and is fully accredited to British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy; all our counsellors are trained and externally supervised.

We have recently doubled the number of counselling appointments available every week (they run during the day and the evenings) and doubled the days on which we carry out assessments. This has cut waiting times and we would hope to be able to offer an appointment for assessment within a couple of weeks with the first appointment following on shortly after.

CWA is in the process of developing its service to meet the needs of women who have experienced rape and sexual violence (and other forms of violence against women), this will necessarily mean a further increase in the counselling service but will remain within the expertise of our service as huge numbers of women who have been in violent and/or abusive relationships have also experienced sexual assault.

Children and young peoples counselling….

We have recently started a pilot programme providing counselling from specially trained counsellors to children and young people who have experienced or witnessed domestic violence and/or abuse.

This is proving very successful and fits well within our children’s services offering extra support to children who have been severely affected by their experiences. After a full evaluation we will pursue resources to enable us to deliver a full service.

We are working in partnership with the schools counselling service who are able to refer to our specialist service if they feel it would benefit the child. The CWA service is a very effective addition to the new general counselling available and will add value and a greater range of options for children and young people across Cardiff.

Further details of all our services for children and young people are available on the relevant page.

Women’s Freedom Programme….

The Freedom Programme is a discussion group for women who have experienced domestic abuse, whether in a current relationship or in one that has previously ended. We discuss all different aspects of an abusive relationship through the 12 week programme, with each topic introduced and led by a facilitator and then discussed in smaller groups of four or five women.

The programme follows the character of ‘The Dominator’, who is a typical abusive partner. It looks at all the different tactics that he uses to hurt us, and the attitudes that support his behaviour. It is a rolling programme, so you can join it any point; and it doesn’t matter if you miss a session.

We provide crèche facilities and try to organise activities for older children to run at the same time and venue to enable women to attend.

For more information about the programme itself please go to www.freedomprogramme.co.uk for leaflets about the CWA programme please go to our factsheets and publications page.

Young person’s personal change programme….

CWA is in the process of developing this ground breaking programme and is currently undertaking extensive consultation with young people across Cardiff to seek their views and capture their experience in order to inform the programmes development.

This programme will be launched by the Spring of 2010 and further details of our consultation programme are available on our children and young people’s services page.