Psychology Appointments
The Avon Practice is accepting new referrals.
Both online and in-person appointments are available.
In-person appointments take place in the Malmesbury office. See Contact page for where to find us.
Initial Contact
After you first email to make an enquiry, we will telephone you and take down brief details about the difficulties you are experiencing, as well as ask you for your basic personal information such as date of birth and addresses. We will refer you elsewhere during this initial conversation if we think your needs would be better met by a different service. All of the information you provide will be treated as strictly confidential. When we have a space to see you, we will then send you an initial appointment. Sometimes we have a waiting list.
Initial Assessment Session
Therapy begins with an initial assessment appointment lasting up to 90 minutes (60 minutes if you are funding treatment with private health insurance). The key part of this first meeting is for us to get to know one another. We will ask you a lot of questions that will enable us to understand your current problems and what might have led to the development of these issues, as well as what might be maintaining the issues. Once we have sufficient information about you and your difficulties, we will make recommendations about the best way forward for you. Our treatment plans are individually tailored to your specific needs. Sometimes the outcome is that we need to refer you elsewhere. This first session provides you with an opportunity to decide if you feel comfortable working with us, as well as for the two of us to develop a shared understanding of your difficulties and how best to work at resolving them.
Therapy Sessions
Therapy sessions are 50 minutes long. The treatment plan that was developed specifically for you in your initial assessment provides the basis for these sessions.
All of our appointments are strictly confidential. The only limit to confidentiality is when we assess that there is a significant risk to your safety or to the safety of someone else. In such cases, we are legally required to share the information.
Number and frequency of sessions
This is a question often asked by people new to therapy - and it is a difficult one to answer. Some people benefit from a small number of focused sessions; others require a few months of therapy; and still others benefit from longer term work. Sessions are usually held weekly to begin with, and then as we work together, the time between sessions lengthens, but this is always decided on a case by case basis and is dependent on a range of different factors. We can discuss the number of sessions and frequency of appointments together. We will always aim to see you for the shortest number of sessions you need.