My name’s Sarah Millward and I run the Get help with counselling concerns service, together with my colleague Katie Matusiak. The Get help with counselling concerns service is a confidential phone and email information and guidance service for any clients or members of the public who've got questions or concerns about their experience of therapy or a therapy-related service.

We offer help and reassurance where enquirers have concerns or questions about their experience of therapy, about how therapy works and what good practice looks like.

We also offer the service to all members of the public, whether their concerns are about a BACP member or not, and the service has been recognised by the Professional Standards Authority.

You may be completely clear about what your concerns are or it could be that something just doesn't feel quite right and you’d like to talk things through. Either way, we’ll try to help you explain what you feel has gone wrong and what you’d like to do about it. We’ll discuss your experiences with you and act as a kind of sounding board to help you come to a decision about what you’d like to do next. We often find that talking things through can help to pinpoint concerns.

Just being able to say what the problem is can help, and we often suggest writing things down to help you name the things in your mind that your counsellor is doing that you don’t understand. Sometimes, that helps clients feel able to speak to their therapist directly about what’s worrying them. We may suggest ideas to help you sort things out, although we’re unable to give advice and tell you what you should or shouldn’t do.

Our role is to try to help you deal with what’s worrying you, if possible. This could mean going back to your therapist with the guidance and information we’ve discussed about what best practice looks like and being able to work things out with them, or it could be talking with you about potentially making a complaint, if that’s something you were thinking about.

Anything you say is confidential and you can speak with us anonymously if you prefer.

We're available from Monday to Thursday 10am to 4pm, by phone and email. Due to the number of enquiries we receive, we do try to limit the calls to a maximum of 30 minutes, where possible.

If you call, please leave us a voicemail and we will get back to you as soon as possible.  Or you can email us.

You can contact us by:

You can find out more on our Get help for counselling concerns web page. 

Please be aware that we store your name if provided, and brief details of your enquiry to support you effectively and to protect BACP against any potential legal claims. Your data will only be provided to a third party if there is a legal basis to do so. This information is retained for three years. Please note that you have restricted rights with regard to this data; for full details please refer to our privacy notice: https://www.bacp.co.uk/privacy-notice/. 

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