Making an appointment
To make an initial appointment, please call us on 01727 858126. Phones are answered between 8am to 10pm Monday to Friday, and 8am to 1pm on Saturday.
At your first contact we will need a little information and then we can book you in for an initial consultation with one of our experienced counsellors. This booking process takes about 10 minutes, including taking payment for the session. At the consultation the counsellor will talk with you for up to an hour about the issues on your mind and how Relate may be able to help.
If appropriate, the counsellor will recommend relationship counselling, sex therapy or family counselling, or if s/he doesn’t think we are the best people to help you, s/he may suggest another course of action.
Following that appointment arrangements will be made, if you wish, to begin ongoing counselling. This appointment will be at the same time each week with the same counsellor, although it is possible that you may need to wait a short while until an ongoing appointment slot becomes available. Daytime appointments tend to be more freely available than evening appointments, and the length of time which you need to wait will greatly depend upon your flexibility – of times, days of the week, and location.
It is unlikely that the counsellor you see every week will be the same person who you saw for the initial consultation, and it possible that your counsellor may be a trainee, who is someone who has not yet completed 240 hours of counselling. However you can feel completely reassured that all our counsellors have been through the necessary training and preparation for them to effectively deliver our services.
Client fees
Relate Central and Northern Hertfordshire is a not for profit charity, but it is necessary for us to charge for counselling sessions in order for us to meet the running costs of the organisation. Our standard price is £50 per session. Saturday counselling is charged at the premium rate of £55 per session.
We aim to provide counselling to people from all sections of the community, including those who are on a low level of disposable income, so if you are on benefits or are suffering from financial hardship you may be entitled to a bursary. This could reduce the cost to £30 per session, or in exceptional cases £15 per session.
The amount of bursaries we offer does vary depending upon the local authority you live in, as these reduced sessions are funded by local authority grants. We would like to thank the following for providing us with such grants:
- Broxbourne Borough Council
- North Hertfordshire District Council
- Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council
Location
Counselling takes place in the following locations.
| Borehamwood | Borehamwood and Elstree Childrens Clinic, Shakespeare Drive, Off Furzehill Road, B/Wood WD6 2FD |
| Harpenden | Harpenden Memorial Hospital, Carlton Road, Harpenden AL5 4TA |
| Hatfield | 82 Town Centre, Hatfield AL10 0JW (next to Barclays Bank) |
| Hoddesdon | Hoddesdon Health Clinic, High Street, Hoddesdon EN11 8BE |
| Letchworth | MS Therapy Centre, 30, Campus Five, Letchworth Garden City SG6 2JF |
| Royston | Royston CAB, Town Hall, Royston SG8 7DA (Portacabin) |
| St Albans | Lower Ground Floor, Dagnall House, Lower Dagnall Street, St Albans, AL3 4PA |
| Stevenage | Stevenage CVS, Swingate, Stevenage SG1 1RU |
| Stevenage CAB, Swingate House, Danestrete, Stevenage SG1 1AF | |
| Welwyn Garden City | Moorswalk Surgery, 123 Moors Walk Panshanger, Welwyn Garden City AL7 2BQ |
For details about specific times of counselling in each location, please contact us.
Confidentiality
Counselling is there to provide you with a safe and confidential place to discuss the things which are troubling you. All the information that we ask for and everything that is discussed in your counselling sessions is kept confidential within Relate.
This means that we will not pass your name or any other information about you to anyone outside Relate. Your presence at Relate will not appear on your medical records – unless it is your doctor who has referred you to us.
The only exception to this rule is if we believe that someone’s personal safety is at risk. That could be your safety, that of someone close to you or that of a child. In these exceptional circumstances, we will breach our own confidentiality code.