The Family Counselling Service
Article | Last updated: 23/01/2015 | Ministry of Children and Families
The family counselling service offers help to anyone who needs to talk about difficult issues in the family.
Parents can book appointments themselves and no referral from a physician is necessary. There is a family counselling service in all counties and the service is free. It is beneficial to seek help at an early stage in order to prevent conflicts from becoming deadlocked.
The family counselling service provides advice and guidance on relationship problems to either the whole family, couples or individuals. Most people come to the family counselling service for advice and to talk about everyday problems or when there are difficulties, conflicts or crises in the family. Parents can receive help to maintain their relationship as a couple or help in relation to the breakup of a relationship. The family counselling service also offers to help improve the parental cooperation between former partners or parents who have never lived together.
The service is manned by multidisciplinary specialist, mainly psychologists and social workers with further training in family therapy. This allows the service to provide rapid, easily available and good professional help to normal people with normal problems in their relationships and families. The employees are subject to a duty of confidentiality.