This page describes what you can expect from a Couples Counselling Network counsellor. To locate a counsellor, please visit our 'Find a counsellor' page.

The Counsellors
Our aim is that you will find CCN counsellors to be warm, generous with their time and expertise, flexible, imaginative in their work with you, innovative and up-to-date. We hope that, whichever counsellor you choose, you find them to be approachable and easy to work with. It is not easy to talk about your close relationships with a total stranger. One of the advantages of talking to a good counsellor is that they will help to put you at ease so you can talk openly about what is troubling you, with a view to resolving difficulties.

Another of the advantages of talking to a counsellor about your problems, is that the counsellor has no investment in your decisions. Family and friends can be wonderful and a great help. Sometimes, though, they may advise you to do what they did in similar circumstances or what they would like you to do, as your decisions may affect them. A counsellor can be completely objective and will not influence you to make a decision which may not be in your best interests.

Training
All counsellors are highly qualified, including a specialist training in working with couples.

Experience
The success of counselling is notoriously hard to quantify. However, current research shows that one of the consistent factors in successful counselling is if the counsellor has been in practice for a long time. All CCN counsellors have many, many years' post-qualification experience and have chosen to work with couples as they enjoy this work.

About us
Angela Burian, who lived in Hampstead, decided to train as a couples counsellor when her children were in their teens. Being underwhelmed by Relate at the time, she set up her own training and then went on to set up the Couples Counselling Network, vetting everybody herself to ensure that all counsellors had the innovative, warm approach that she had. Clients called in to her from all round the country and she allocated clients to the counsellor who she thought would suit them best. She contracted cancer and gradually stepped back from running everything. The Network had a website by then and a small group of people decided to continue the network but just via the website. We contacted everyone and about two-thirds decided to stay in the network.

Gillian Hill deals with enquiries. When a counsellor expresses an interest in joining the network, they go through an intensive vetting process, with them checking us out and us checking them out, culminating with an hour's telephone interview. We want this to be a quality group that good, experienced counsellors want to join and one that potential clients can completely trust, so only a proportion of applicants complete the process.

Five people run the network and we do it for free, in memory of Angela and because we know that there are few resources for clients looking for a properly trained and experienced couples counsellor. A new counsellor pays a joining fee, which we use to pay our website designer and manager, who works to keep the site on the first page of major search engines so we are easy to find, and he keeps it up-to-date for us.

Mim Kay
Gillian Hill
Brian Turner
Anthony Oglesby
Jane Taylor
Andrew Kemp

If you are a counsellor and would like information about joining the Couples Counselling Network, please email GillianHill@aol.com

top