CPF Counselling is committed to offering affordable, high quality psychodynamic one-to-one and group counselling to all individuals over 18 years of age subject to them being clinically suitable. Our client group is anyone who suffers from anxiety and depression or who is functioning below capacity, especially in their relationships. Our objective is to explore reasons for our clients' distress and to facilitate an improvement in their capacity for personal insight and the marshalling of their inner resources for personal growth and greater sense of wellbeing.
Our purpose is to provide counselling to anyone, irrespective of their ability to pay, and to provide a counselling centre which respects the human rights and dignity of all individuals. We are committed to making our services known to as many people as possible in Croydon and South London, to continue to be financially sound and to practise the principles of good organisational and clinical governance.
An additional objective of CPF Counselling is to offer clinical training placements to student counsellors on BACP and UKCP registered training courses from colleges in and around London. We offer our students rigorous and regular supervision and training workshops, and aim for them to thrive during their training period with CPF and after graduation when some stay on as volunteer, qualified counsellors.
CPF Counselling offers one-to-one and group once-weekly counselling to the adults of Croydon and South London. Apart from group counselling, we offer short and long term counselling to our clients. Long term work is available up to three years in a one-to-one setting, which is considered very rare outside private practice. We believe that this can help with much deeper psychological issues which can benefit our clients and gives our students and qualified counsellors special opportunities for their professional development.
To underpin counselling excellence, all counsellors receive weekly supervision from qualified, senior counsellors, and regular training workshops on theoretical and practical topics. Our fully qualified clinical managers provide the maintenance and support for all our clinical work. All members of CPF Counselling follow the ethical code of practice of our registering body the BACP (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy).
CPF Counselling offers a safe and comfortable environment in which the counselling takes place. The sense of stability which is fundamental to effective counselling is further enhanced by CPF owning the building in which the counselling, training and committee meetings take place. A positive feeling of community is tangible throughout the organisation.
CPF Counselling is mainly financed by the fees received from clients and its funds are carefully managed and invested in accordance with good governance. Fees are based on assessing what clients can pay, and in accordance with our governing objects. We have a bursary fund which subsidises the counselling for those clients who can afford very little.
Our clinical work is monitored externally and internally by the re-registration by the BACP and from feedback forms from clients completed during the lifetime of their counselling and at its close. We are pleased that the results have been so positive, but have also implemented changes where feedback has indicated that our service could be improved. To fulfil our objective in making our counselling service known to as many potential beneficiaries as possible in our catchment area we publicise CPF in GP surgeries, send mail outs to the community and feature our counselling information on our website.
Finally, over recent years we have seen an increase in clients who have not been able to find psychological assistance elsewhere in the community. As cutbacks in funds from central and local government have worked through the care system, a burden has been placed on charities like CPF Counselling to take up the challenge of providing counselling resources for the increase in numbers of those in need of psychological help. We are committed to sustaining our current role in relieving psychological distress, but are also seeking to meet the strategic challenge of expanding and extending our counselling services in South London. Increasing the skills, experience and number of our Board members is the first part of our plan.
