Fees
From 4th January 2022 my fee will be £50 per contact hour for individual clients and supervisees. My fee for couples/relationship counselling is £60 per hour. In recognition of the costs faced by students, a discount of £10 per hour is offered. Fees agreed with existing clients will not change.
This is my first increase in charges since 2016. It reflects the steadily increasing costs of providing therapy plus significant investment in facilities, training, qualifications and standards of delivery.
Services
Therapy sessions can be in person (preferred) or online. These last for one hour, which may be varied by agreement. The first session with any client is free of charge.
The duration of Clinical Supervision sessions will be agreed with each Supervisee as part of the contract.
A one-hour session time is longer than the 50 minutes that many therapists offer because I find a full hour more effective: it reflects only part of the overall time commitment from me.
In addition to the session times, I spend on average 15-30 minutes completing process notes of each session, client records, and issuing invoices. I take anti-covid hygiene measures between clients, administer bookings etc. All this means that I must maintain secure systems (including these web pages).
I pay for and spend time on regular professional development, including my own clinical supervision. I carry professional indemnity cover and I am registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office, as well as holding membership of two professional Associations (the BACP and CIPD).
My office is of a good standard and must be maintained. I have a small library of books that Clients and Supervisees may borrow.
All of these essential costs must be taken into account, as well as the reality in self-employment that my fees have to cover such mundane things as income tax, national insurance, annual leave and sickness absences (fortunately I have only missed seven days since 2009!).
I provide this information to be transparent about the costs of providing therapy, which are quite reasonably not known by many clients.