Good Passion CareRisk & safety screening
Where appropriate, counselling may begin with private and separate screening to identify relevant relationship, personal, and safety concerns.
For couples, each partner may complete relevant screening and assessment independently and confidentially. This can help ensure that important concerns are identified and considered as part of the counselling process.
Session-by-session outcome measures
Where appropriate, progress can be monitored using structured, session-by-session outcome measures. These can help identify changes over time, highlight areas that may require further attention, and provide feedback on the counselling process.
Assessment tools
Depending on the client’s needs, presenting concerns, and counselling goals, appropriate professional assessment tools may include:
Individual counselling
- Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II)
- Assesses the severity of depressive symptoms.
- Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI)
- Assesses the severity of anxiety symptoms.
- Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale
- Assesses self-esteem and an individual’s overall sense of self-worth.
Couple counselling
- PREPARE/ENRICH
- Assesses relationship strengths, areas for growth, communication, conflict, expectations, and other dimensions of couple functioning.
- SYMBIS
- Assesses relationship dynamics, strengths, potential areas of difficulty, and factors relevant to relationship preparation and counselling.
- Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS)
- Assesses relationship adjustment and satisfaction across several dimensions of couple functioning.
- Couples Satisfaction Index (CSI)
- Measures relationship satisfaction and can be used to monitor changes over the course of counselling.
Family counselling
- Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES)
- Assesses family cohesion and adaptability/flexibility.
- Family Relationship Index (FRI)
- Assesses aspects of the family environment, including cohesion, expressiveness, and conflict.
- Ecomaps
- Visually explores the family’s relationships with extended family, friends, schools, workplaces, community organisations, and other sources of support or stress.
Assessment tools are selected thoughtfully according to each client’s circumstances, presenting concerns, and counselling goals. They are not applied routinely or automatically but used where they may contribute meaningfully to understanding the client’s situation and informing the counselling process.
Applied counselling theories
Our therapeutic approach is tailored to the individual needs, circumstances, goals, and presenting concerns of each client. Assessment findings, clinical formulation, and the nature of the concerns presented help inform the counselling approach and therapeutic techniques used.
Depending on the client and the context of counselling, we may draw from a range of established counselling theories and approaches.
Individual counselling
Individual counselling may draw on a range of therapeutic approaches, including:
- Person-Centred Therapy
- Provides a supportive, empathic, and non-judgemental environment that enables clients to explore their experiences and develop greater self-awareness and personal agency.
- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
- Explores the relationship between thoughts, emotions, and behaviours and supports clients in developing more helpful patterns of thinking and responding.
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Explores how past experiences, relationships, and underlying emotional processes may influence current thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.
- Existential Therapy
- Explores meaning, identity, values, choice, responsibility, and other fundamental aspects of the human experience.
- Gestalt Therapy
- Promotes awareness of thoughts, emotions, bodily experiences, and patterns of interaction in the present moment.
- Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT)
- Helps clients identify and challenge rigid or unhelpful beliefs that may contribute to emotional or behavioural difficulties.
- Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT)
- Focuses on clients’ strengths, resources, preferred outcomes, and practical steps towards meaningful change.
- Narrative Therapy
- Explores the stories and meanings people have developed about themselves and their experiences, helping them consider alternative perspectives and possibilities.
Couple counselling
Couple counselling may draw on relationship, attachment, cognitive-behavioural, systemic, and insight-oriented approaches, depending on the needs and goals of the couple.
- Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Focuses on emotional attachment, underlying needs, relationship security, and recurring interaction patterns.
- Gottman Method
- Focuses on strengthening friendship and connection, improving communication, managing conflict, and developing healthier relationship patterns.
- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Couples
- Explores thoughts, behaviours, communication patterns, and responses that may contribute to relationship difficulties.
- Psychodynamic and Insight-Oriented Approaches
- Explore how previous relationships and experiences may influence expectations, emotions, and patterns within the current relationship.
- Systemic Approaches
- Consider relationship difficulties within the broader pattern of interactions between partners rather than locating the problem solely within one individual.
- Narrative Therapy
- Explores the stories, beliefs, and meanings that partners have developed about themselves, each other, and their relationship.
Family counselling
Family counselling often draws on systemic and relational approaches, recognising that family members influence one another and that difficulties can be understood within the wider family context.
- Family Systems Therapy
- Views the family as an interconnected system and explores patterns of communication, relationships, roles, and interaction between family members.
- Bowen Family Systems Theory
- Explores emotional processes within families, differentiation, relationship patterns, emotional triangles, and influences that may extend across generations. Genograms may be used to explore family history and patterns.
- Structural Family Therapy
- Examines family organisation, boundaries, roles, hierarchies, and relationships between different family members and subsystems.
- Strategic Family Therapy
- Focuses on patterns of interaction that may be maintaining a presenting difficulty and uses structured, goal-oriented interventions to support change.
- Narrative Family Therapy
- Explores the stories and meanings that shape how a family understands itself and its difficulties, while helping separate people from the problems they are experiencing.
- Solution-Focused Family Therapy
- Emphasises family strengths, existing resources, successful exceptions, and practical steps towards the family’s preferred outcomes.
An integrative approach
Where appropriate, counselling may incorporate more than one theoretical approach. An integrative approach allows the therapeutic process to be responsive to the client’s circumstances rather than applying the same model to every person, couple, or family.
We aim to provide a structured, ethical, and individualised therapeutic process that is informed by assessment, professional training, clinical judgement, and the client’s goals and preferences.