Counselling Service -
Important Announcement

Due to the ever-increasing demands for our Counselling Service at present we have made the decision not to take any further new referrals for Counselling as we felt it was unbecoming to  continue to do counselling assessments and not to be able to allocate a counsellor immediately. At present we are looking at a 12 weeks waiting list, which does not seem long, however we have never in 11 years had to put guests on a waiting list.  

The decision was not taken lightly, our Service Level Agreement (our pledge) is that when we receive a referral, within 5 working days of receiving the referral we make an appointment to see the guest, complete their counselling assessment and allocate a counsellor.

At present we are able to make the appointment to see the guest, do their assessment but not be in a position to assign a counsellor.   

We have seen a significant increase at the start of this year by almost 50% and felt it was important that we communicated a very clear and open message about our waiting times for our counselling service.  

We are excited to announce we do have new counsellors joining us in due course, but it’s important that they understand the running of the charity, complete their induction and feel part of the team before they start to see our guests.

We felt that it was important to be open and honest about our Counselling service, we continue to support those who reach out to us on a daily basis, none of our other services that we offer are affected by this decision.

Thank you for taking the time to read and share our message and for the continued support that we receive to enable us to keep on providing the services that we do.

Kind Regards 

Mechelle Harris-Founder

The Hummingbird Centre-MBE Voluntary Services 

We do hope you will understand and support our decision.