Working in a relational way means that we’ll seek to work with you, your family or your child in a way that recognises the context that surrounds you and experiences that have shaped you. We wish to privilege the relationships (with yourself, with others, with the world) that have led you to where you are now and to be the person/people we see before us. We will be interested to know how the stories you have told or been told along the way shape how you see yourselves and how the problem that you have brought to therapy is connected to these stories/relationships/experiences.

Yes, even though we take a relational view of human life, we are well versed in meeting with people as individuals. Even though we might meet you on your own, we’ll still be interested in the relationships and context that have shaped you into the person you are today and how the problem you are bringing has sprung up amongst all of this. We’ll want to understand the problem in relationship to you and your world and will look to find the ways and means by which you can overcome the problem.

Yes, we have many therapists who are highly experienced in working with children and young people. Depending on what is going on we may work with parents and children together, just with parents, or with the young person on their own. We tend to look at a whole family when making sense of what is going on for a young person as families are so shaping of how we develop, but it may be that a young person needs their own talking space, and we will work in whatever way is best to help.

No, we find blame a really unhelpful thing in families and we are not in the business of blaming family members. We find that people often get stuck in reciprocal or unhelpful patterns, not because any one person is at fault, but because of how things have simply emerged or transpired over time. We often invite people to think about the responsibilities they hold in any given situation but do not see the merit in blaming.

Being trauma-informed means that we understand that people’s problems stem from the things that happen to them in their lives rather than relating to something fundamentally wrong with them. We acknowledge that within life we can experience certain events as traumatic and that what we experience as traumatic is individual to each of us. We are keen to learn ‘what has happened to you?’ rather than traditional psychiatric models which may ask ‘what is wrong with you?’ This might not seem like a great difference, but this ethical position helps us validate and normalise the experiences and struggles people bring to therapy and help us avoid making people feel abnormal in their own lives.

Non-pathologising practice is a view of therapeutic and change work that highlights the dangers in labelling people’s behaviour, emotions and thinking styles as ‘abnormal’ and/or ‘disordered’. In our experience, people’s problems often make sense in the context of their lives, that is what has happened to people can often help us understand why they do the things they do, think the way they think or feel the way they feel. We find that through pathologising people (e.g. through diagnostic heavy understandings), professionals can risk disempowering people and making it more difficult to overcome these very human problems as people feel there is something wrong with them. We will seek to understand your problem in ways that make sense for you and will work hard to help you take your life back from the problem. You are not the problem, the problem is the problem.

Our registration as an ERNI affirmed organisation is testament to our position that emotions are not illness.

We currently accept clients who have the appropriate insurance with AXA. If you are uncertain whether your insurance would cover psychological therapies with us please check with your provider.

Unless explicitly named, all sessions will last for 50 minutes.

We appreciate that deciding to get help is a big decision and often there is a financial implication of this. At Kaleidoscope we have tried our best to offer an exemplary service at the best price possible. Our range of highly skilled and experienced therapists share our ethical position that it is important that families and individuals should not have to opt for a poor standard of therapy because better professionals are too expensive. We hope we have struck this balance well enough and welcome any feedback from clients on our transparent pricing structure.

Therapeutic sessions with our psychologists/psychotherapists will last 50 minutes and are charged at £105 per session.

Please note that session rates for work that involves the courts or the local authority or is case managed is charged at £125 per 50 minute session.

When working with separated families we offer specialist packages of support. Please enquire for details.

Please inform us as soon as possible if you are unable to make an arranged appointment. Cancellations made within 48hrs of the session date/time will incur a 50% late cancellation charge and those cancelled within 24hrs of the session date/time will incur a 100% late cancellation charge.

All of the therapists working with Kaleidoscope are qualified and highly experienced. We will wish to ensure that you are given a therapist who is the right fit for you and can meet your needs.

We will be able to work with you in terms of the days/times we are available. As each of our therapists work specific days we will inform you of what therapists might be available on the days/times you are looking to be seen. We will never recommend a therapist who we feel is unsuitable to you and will collaborate with you to offer the support you need.

Absolutely. We have high levels of experience adapting traditional talking therapies to online formats. This may be therapy with children, families, couples or individuals. This is a great option if you want to access our brilliant service but live a bit too far away to travel to our clinic.

We will be open and honest with you if we feel that an online approach to therapy is not suitable for the problem you are experiencing.

Our therapeutic work will focus on goals specified by you and shaped between us. There is no minimum or maximum length of therapy required but we do insist that we regularly ‘review’ our therapy to ensure it is continuing to meet your needs and enable us to adjust accordingly.

Often therapy comes to a natural ending agreed between clients and therapist. However, should you wish to end therapy at any time that is completely your choice.

The information discussed in sessions is held in the strictest confidence. The only time we would seek to breach this is if we believed that you or somebody else is at risk of harm. In such instances, we would be ethically bound to contact the necessary authorities (e.g. police, social care, health). In any such instance, we would make every attempt to discuss my concerns with you and explain the actions we intend to take.

General information pertaining to our privacy policy can be found at the link at the bottom of our website

If you require a report of the work we have undertaken this can be provided on request. These will represent as accurately as possible our work and it will not be possible to embellish or fabricate details. Report writing is charged at our standard hourly rate and you will be invoiced for the amount.

Children must feel safe to speak within therapy knowing that what they say will be held in confidence. As such we request that parents respect their child’s right to confidentiality as much as possible. We do encourage children to share details of our sessions with their parents to join up our work with life at home. We will provide regular verbal updates to parents as therapy progresses for children who are not considered to have ‘Gillick competence’. Gillick competence is when children under the age of 16 can consent to their own treatment if they’re believed to have enough intelligence, competence and understanding to fully appreciate what’s involved in their treatment. Should a child be Gillick competent, their right to confidentiality will be respected much like any adult participant in therapy.

If you are interested in the help we offer and would like to get booked in for a free 30-minute consultation with Dr Paul Walton, then please get in touch via the form below. If you have any further questions, then please click here to see our FAQ page.