Counselling service revived in Grantham to help survivors of rape and sexual abuse
A counselling service for survivors of rape and sexual abuse has been revived in Grantham after a similar service suddenly closed without warning last year.
Two members of the former Trust House have recently started Umbrella Counselling East Midlands. Michelle Tasker and Katie Brown were counsellors when Trust House closed in September.
They have now been joined by Phil Marshall, a trained counsellor supervisor, for the new service which is based in St Catherine’s Road, close to where Trust House was situated. And, like its predecessor, it works with survivors of rape and sexual assault and their families.
Katie said: “We provide one to one counselling and it’s not time limited. If you go to a lot of the free services such as the NHS, you will be offered between six and 12 sessions.
“However, the trauma that our client base has experienced is a very individual trauma so we tailor our counselling sessions to the individual. They bring whatever they need to talk about, which might not be related to the trauma at all, it might be something emotional based that they are having trouble processing on any given day, and they stay with us as long as they need to.”
Phil added: “When people experience trauma there are all sorts of symptoms that go with that and those symptoms can be quite risky and dangerous. Sometimes people need to find ways to manage that before they can then do some of the work . Short-term therapy doesn’t address that.”
Many clients of Trust House were devastated when they learned it had closed , as were Katie and Michelle. But they are relieved to be able to return with the new service.
While the Trust House service was free, Umbrella Counselling is having to charge a small fee while it works to attract funding, so the hope is that its service will become free in the near future.
Michelle said: “Clients were left with a sign on the door, as were we. We had to beg to get into the building to phone clients. They have been so lovely as well. We have had flowers, we’ve had cards, gifts sent from them and lovely messages. They have been really supportive.”
Katie said: “One client from Trust House turned up with coffee, tea, sugar, juice because everything revolves around a cup of tea or coffee. When a client arrives the first thing you do is make them a drink. We can’t at the moment because of Covid, but it’s these little things that are really important to them. You are creating that place of safety for the client, which is why they were so devastated when Trust House closed.”
The service is based upstairs in the building, but it hopes to move downstairs as well to enable disabled access and set up a children’s room.
After just a few weeks of being open, the service is being kept busy, even though it has only advertised itself though its Facebook page and by word of mouth.
Katie said: “We just wanted to set up a service which was more easily accessible. If we can get funding and the service can be free again that would be amazing, but we are keeping it as low cost as we can so we can maintain a service.”
Umbrella says it would welcome donations from businesses or individuals to allow sessions to continue.
To contact the service for help or to make a donation, call 01476 249403, email office@umbrellacounselling.com or go to the Umbrella Counselling Facebook page. A website at www.umbrellacounselling.com is almost ready to be launched.
