Before therapy commences in earnest, an individual is invited to an assessment.
An assessment allows the the individual to give an overview of their problems to the therapist, allows the therapist offers some helpful, information-gathering questions, and allows both the opportunity to discuss if they can work together to achieve the focus discovered in the assessment.
During the assessment, the options of brief/time-limited counselling and open-ended counselling are considered and discussed by the therapist.
If the client and therapist agree not to proceed into therapy a referral may be made to another therapist. Otherwise, counselling proceeds after the assessment.
Click for full details about assessments for individual counselling.