Ascent Counselling

The Ascent Counselling Service is a specialist therapeutic support service for women and girls aged 16 and over, who have experienced domestic abuse. This can include physical, emotional, psychological, sexual, and financial abuse, coercive control, harassment, stalking and other harmful practices, such as FGM, forced marriage and honour-based violence. We are unable to offer counselling for childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and non-domestic violence/abuse.

Our counselling service is delivered as part of the Ascent Advice and Counselling partnership.

If you are looking for the North London Rape Crisis counselling service at Solace, please visit Solace Rape Crisis – Solace Womens Aid.

1:1 Counselling

The service covers 1 assessment and up to 20 trauma-focused counselling sessions.

Our counsellors create a safe space for survivors to explore the impact of abuse on their lives, help them to recover from the long-term impact and support them to make positive changes for themselves.

The Ascent Counselling Service is available in 21 London boroughs:

We are able to support survivors who are involved in ongoing police investigations or are engaging with the Criminal Justice System.

Referrals

We work with women who:

• Have a significant connection, i.e. living, working, education, GP services or children’s nursery/school, with one of the 21 London boroughs the service covers (see above).
• Have been affected by domestic abuse at any point in their life. This can include physical, emotional, psychological, sexual and financial abuse, coercive control, harassment, stalking, and other harmful practices, such as FGM and honour-based violence. We are unable to offer counselling for childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and non-domestic violence/abuse.
• Are not high-risk victims of domestic abuse.
• Are emotionally resilient enough to manage their own safety in terms of coping with possible anxiety or emotional pain that might come up without this posing a risk to their well-being.
• Are psychologically well enough to maintain contact for the duration of the agreed time.
• Want and can commit to regular counselling sessions on a weekly basis, are able to manage their time in order to attend and make appropriate childcare arrangements
• Want to make changes happen for themselves and are willing to consider personal possibilities
• Are able to attend counselling sessions/assessments within the counsellors’ availability
• Are not currently receiving counselling with another service and are not expecting to start counselling with another service within the next 6 months
• Pregnant survivors can be referred; suitability for counselling will be considered on a case-by-case basis depending on how far the survivor is into the pregnancy. We are unable to accept referrals for anyone who has given birth within the last six months.
• Can communicate their thoughts, feelings and experiences in English, as we are unable to work with interpreters. Sometimes we have bilingual counsellors, so it may be possible to accommodate counselling in an alternative language (please contact service to check).

The counselling service is unable to provide crisis intervention support or give emergency appointments if a survivor is in immediate psychological crisis and potentially at risk. If this is the case:

Survivors should speak to their GP, or call NHS 111 and select option 2, or contact their local mental health crisis line.

Professionals can refer survivors to the appropriate Community Mental Health Team (CMHT).

In an emergency, please call 999. 

If there is an ongoing police investigation, or if a client is required to attend as a witness in criminal court proceedings for domestic and/or sexual violence, we may be able to provide pre-trial support sessions.

We are currently unable to accept new referrals for counselling.

Important information for professionals: To find out when our Ascent counselling service has capacity for new referrals, please email counselling@solacewomensaid.org, requesting that we add you to our mailing list. Please include a list of the boroughs you support. You will then receive email notifications each time the counselling wait list opens and closes in those boroughs. This mailing list is for referral capacity notifications only.

Information for survivors: For more information on how to access our counselling service, please email counselling@solacewomensaid.org or call 0300 330 5479 (line open Monday to Friday 10am-2pm).

www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/