Frances Coad

I work face to face with clients on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  I also work online via Zoom and on the telephone.

I have been a person-centred counsellor for 12 years with particular experience in bereavement, loss and grief. I have BACP accreditation and currently work as a counsellor, counselling supervisor and trainer.

Having felt helped by counselling as a client led me to train as a counsellor alongside my work in primary teaching. I qualified in 2008 and have since worked with young people and adults in many different contexts. These include GP surgeries, school-based services and local organisations such as York Women’s Counselling Service and Community Counselling in Malton where I was Lead Counsellor Developing New Services.

I have spent much of my counselling life working with bereaved clients, those facing end of life and their loved ones. I was Senior Counsellor and Trainer based at Saint Catherine’s Hospice in Scarborough from 2012 - 2018 and thereafter Bereavement and Palliative Care Counsellor at Saint Michael’s Hospice in Harrogate.

Like all counsellors, I have regular supervision to support my work. I am a qualified supervisor and offer supervision to other counsellors. And, like all counsellors, alongside the qualifications and training below, I keep up to date with the counselling field by reading and online short courses.

As a BACP accredited practitioner, I abide by their Ethical Framework, my work is fully insured and I hold DBS certification.

Like many clients, you may have always thought of yourself as 'not the sort of person who needs counselling.' We often come to counselling when what we have always done no longer seems to help us manage new situations. In seeking support, you are likely to be feeling vulnerable right now. Person-centred counselling aims to foster a safe and confidential relationship. You will be at the centre of a supportive, non-judgmental space from where you can begin to recognise complex feelings, express your thoughts and widen your choices to help you cope with life’s challenges.

I am a person-centred counsellor with an interest in psychoanalytic concepts and attachment theory. These ideas inform my thinking about the dynamics at play in my work. They don’t alter my belief that we have an inherent ‘self-actualising tendency’: you will want to do the best for yourself and those around you. Sometimes what we learn about ourselves in childhood may need updating. In our sessions, we may need to revisit the past to help us revise and add to our coping strategies in the light of life events, losses and our patterns of relating to others.

First of all, I hope you will feel free to contact me to arrange a brief telephone call. This may help us both get an idea of whether we feel we can work well together. You can tell me what has brought you to counselling at this particular point in your life. There is no charge for this call and no obligation to recontact me if you feel I won’t be helpful to you.

If you decide to go ahead, I can send you a small amount of paperwork to look at and we will arrange a first session.  This will be an assessment appointment. You can give me some more details about yourself and we can talk about how we will work together. Initially, some of this may feel a bit bureaucratic, but it helps to know about how sessions are arranged, my fees and cancellation policy and about the confidential storage of your information. After that, we'll put aside the form-filling! You'll be able to tell me what it is like to be you at the moment.

During this meeting we will also set a realistic focus for the work and agree an initial number of sessions. Relational counsellors believe that we are always growing and changing, but we will try to identify when you will know the current work is finished. We will do this by regularly reviewing how progress is going.