``You helped my child to smile again.``

We offer counselling to children and young people, aged 3-18 years old, who have experienced sexual violence, whether recently or in the past.

We have worked within the sexual violence sector for 30 years and are highly experienced in working with sexual trauma. All of our children and young people’s counsellors have specific qualifications for working with this age group. All of our counsellors are qualified and registered, have experience of working with trauma, plus additional training on working with sexual violence. To help children and young people to engage, we use a range of therapies including art, music and play therapies.

Counselling sessions are normally weekly, at the same time, for an hour each week. We can offer appointments at a variety of times, including evenings and weekends. We offer counselling face to face and via telephone or video call (skype, zoom, MS Teams, WhatsApp etc). Face to face counselling is available at our venues across South, West and Mid-Wales.

Our counsellors will work closely with family members and carers, where appropriate, to support the child or young person’s counselling journey.

Our Wellbeing Service offers 1:2:1 support with a trained sexual violence support worker. This support might be an alternative to counselling, or might help with stabilisation before counselling.

Our young people’s sexual violence support workers offer support for children and young people affected by sexual violence. This includes working through positive coping strategies and grounding exercises for trauma; goal setting and working towards recovery; and preparing for counselling.

It is a non-disclosure service offering:

• a short pre-counselling service that prepares and helps clients get the most out of their counselling
• a longer, in-depth support package that is an alternative to counselling and can help clients deal with a wide variety of issues they may be experiencing.

They also offer practical support, such as contacting people on your behalf, for example health professionals.

We also offer psycho-educational groups for young people called Sea Change. See more below.

At various points throughout the year, we run online or face-to-face groups for older children and young people.

These groups are ‘psycho-educational,’ which means that they provide information about, and offer discussions around, the impact that trauma has on the brain and the experiences that can result from being affected by sexual violence. The course covers a range of topics from sleep strategies and managing anxiety to preparing for counselling. These groups are facilitated by our trained support workers and counsellors and we ensure that the space is always safe for each young person that attends.

These groups, as well as providing education and coping strategies, also allow a space for young people to share the impact that sexual violence has had on them with other people their age who have been through similar experiences. These groups are non-disclosure, so no one will discuss their experience of sexual violence, but there is space to share and to connect with others. Sexual violence can often make people feel alone in their experience but these groups can provide a place to feel connected to others. Some of the groups will be single gender groups and some will be mixed gender groups.

Some of the resources from these groups can be accessed at our resources page here.

If you are on our waiting list, or accessing our wellbeing or counselling services, you can express your interest in attending one of our groups. To refer into our services, please see our referrals page here.

SARCs:

If a child or young person has experienced sexual violence (see here for definitions of sexual violence) within the past 10 days, they can access our SARC facilities.

Children must be accompanied by a supervising adult, or if the young person is under 16 and deemed to be Gillick Competent (see here for more), they may access our services without a supervising adult but with a crisis worker in attendance.

To find out more about our SARC services, see here.

ISVAs:

We have a team of ISVAs that work with children and young people, and the family members and other professionals around them, if they are involved in an incident that has been reported to the police, or if they are thinking of reporting to the police. See more about our ISVA support here.

Sometimes, a young person might be worried about or displaying inappropriate, problematic or harmful sexual behaviour.  Or, it could be that someone else is worried about the young person’s sexual behaviour.

Often, with some support, this behaviour can be much easier to understand and to change.  New Pathways’ new Compass Project can work with young people and their parents/carers to develop helpful strategies and techniques to prevent this behaviour from escalating and to live safe and healthy lives.

What we do

We will talk with you about how we gather information and carry out assessments.  If you are in agreement and wish to engage in the service, we will work with you to develop a shared understanding of the behaviour and how best to address this.

Who can access the service?

We are looking at ways to make this service available to as many children and young people as possible. Until then, this service is only available to children and young people (up to and including age 17 years) who are receiving a therapeutic service at New Pathways for their own experiences of surviving sexual abuse or violence.

How to access the service?

There are two ways of accessing this service:

• As part of the children and young people’s referral into wellbeing or counselling services, you or your referrer can include details of any inappropriate, problematic or harmful sexual behaviours that you would like to describe.
• If you are already receiving therapeutic support with New Pathways, you, or a parent/carer could ask to speak with your therapist or a member of New Pathways.  They will be able to put you in touch with the most appropriate person to speak to.

Our duty to keep children and young people safe

As with all safeguarding responsibilities, we have a responsibility to inform social services and/or police if we are concerned that someone is at risk of harm.

Children and Young People’s SARC or ISVA Services

Please call us on 01685 379 310 to access these services.

 

Children and Young People’s Counselling and Wellbeing Support Services

You can refer a child or young person  using our referral form, found here. You can also call us on 01685 379 310 and we can take a referral over the phone, or we can offer support and advice if you are not sure which service you need.

If you are under 18 and want to refer yourself, please give us a call on 01685 379 310 and one of our children and young persons’ team can speak to you.

Our phone lines are open during normal working hours (9am-5pm Monday to Thursday, and 9am-4.30pm on Fridays), and we monitor our online and email referrals regularly.

 

Children and Young People’s Sexual Behaviour Services

These services are not open to direct referral currently. Please see the section on Children and Young People’s Sexual Behaviour Services (in the section above) for more details.

 

Our duty to keep children and young people safe

If a child is suffering, has suffered or is likely to be at risk of harm, it is our responsibility to ensure that our concerns are referred to social services or the police. Whenever possible we would discuss this with you and listen to any concerns you may have, which we will take seriously.