Private Services

Individual Counselling

We offer face to face counselling for individuals from Chester, Wrexham and the surrounding areas to help with a range of issues. Common problems can include:

Our team of therapists are highly skilled and have many years counselling experience. We also provide group therapy, please get in touch for more information.

We provide a range of different modes of therapy which include:

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)

CBT is a talking therapy where the therapist and client work together to identify problems and look at ways of solving them. This often involves looking at the way you think and behave about certain things. CBT therapy focuses on life in the present and the problems you have right now rather than looking back into the past. The aim of therapy is to teach you to apply the skills you have learnt during treatment to your daily life. This should help you manage your problems and stop them having a negative impact on your life, even after your therapy has finished.

EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing)

EMDR is a psychotherapy that helps us to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that can result from distressing life experiences/trauma. EMDR can help alter the way trauma memories are stored in the brain, which can then make them easier to manage and help reduce the associated symptoms we can experience from trauma/distress.

Integrative

This is a counselling/psychotherapy approach where a number of different elements of specific therapies are drawn upon to help custom make a technique for each individual client. The counselling techniques used are tailored to the client’s needs and personal circumstances.

Person Centred

This is a style of counselling that believes that it is the client that has a unique understanding of their own world. The therapist aims to help the client re connect with this insight and thus the client can move through difficulty and find answers within their world.

Solution Focused

Solution Focused therapy focuses on solution building by exploring the clients current resources and goals. Using a future focused approach to look forward and achieve their goals.

Transactional Analysis

Transactional Analysis (TA) is a theory of personality development and provides a way of understanding communication to facilitate personal growth and change. TA provides a way for us to understand how people are structured psychologically, how they function and how they express their personality behaviourally.

TA offers a rich and varied theory for us to understand how we may continue to re-play childhood strategies when we are adults, even when these produce results which are unhelpful or painful. It provides many effective models to help us understand human interactions and to promote open communication and autonomy.

Upon assessment, we will help you decide what may be the most helpful therapy for you and put you in touch with an appropriate therapist.

Couples Counselling

We offer therapy to help with both couple and family relationships. This can include Separation, divorce, family life, parenting, relationships and sex, whatever your sexuality or marital status may be.

Psychosexual Therapy (PST)

This is a therapy to address sexual issues like intimacy, loss of desire or erectile dysfunctions which are having a negative impact on an individual or a relationship.

The work involves exploring past and present beliefs and experiences and is underpinned by Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). The work involves goal setting with an individual tailored treatment program set with homework/exercises to be carried out in the client’s own home.

Clinical Supervision

We provide clinical supervision to both qualified and trainee counsellors/therapists in addition to other professionals.

Neurofeedback

Sometimes our brains can be ‘stuck’ and not by choice, but rather as a result of events in our life. This could be hypervigilance, dysregulation etc.

Just like we exercise our body physically, we can also exercise our brain to help it perform better.

Neurofeedback can be really helpful for:

1. Focus
2. Sleep
3. Emotional regulation
4. Social anxiety
5. OCD
6. Impulse control
7. Anxiety
8. ASD, ADHD
9. Depression
10. PTSD

Neurofeedback helps the brain rewire itself for your best overall function. Its incredibly useful at helping the central nervous system calm, learn to regulate our emotions and helping our brain to learn to ‘PAUSE’.

What does a first session look like?

Small electrodes/sensors are applied to your scalp with paste – this helps the therapist ‘listen’ to your brain wave, a little like a monitor for your heart would. This doesn’t hurt whatsoever.

You would be sat on a comfortable chair, watching an animation/film etc.

The tv monitor acts a little like a mirror to the brain, allowing your brain to auto-adjust, a little like we would if we walked past a mirror. As the signals are sent to the amplifier, your brain receives live feedback about what’s happening and it starts to interact – for example, using it to feel calmer.

Because the feedback is rooted in the animation/movie the therapy requires no cognitive effort and it can be used with clients of all ages.

ADHD / Autism assessments

Aspire Assessments Limited is founded and directed by Dr Jo Martin, a Paediatrician with over 20 years’ experience, and Mrs Kathy Walsh, a Specialist nurse for more than 30 years. We have a combined experience of over 50 years in the NHS, in excess of 20 years working with young people with neurodiversity, mainly ASD (autistic spectrum disorder) and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).

We can assess children and adolescents for ASD and ADHD. Our waiting lists are short and accessible. We have a multidisciplinary team including psychologists, speech and language therapists and child and adolescent mental health experienced clinicians.

We are NICE compliant, and currently also work in the NHS. Our reports are comparable to those produced in the NHS and so are widely accepted by the NHS and education. We use gold standard ADOS-2 assessments which focus on the key indicators of autism, including communication, social interaction, sensory issues and restrictive and repetitive behaviours. Most other private autism assessments do not include an ADOS-2 assessment and so commonly are not accepted by NHS/education.

We are able to diagnose children as young as two and a half years of age with ASD and our assessments are completed within 6 weeks of being commenced. We are able to diagnose children from 6 years of age with ADHD. We are able to signpost to post diagnostic services for help and support. We are able to medicate for ADHD when diagnosed if families would like to consider this.

The basic assessment process will include:

• An initial telephone triage appointment
• Consultation with school regarding the child’s/young person’s strengths and areas of difference
• An interview with parents to collect a developmental history and to consider any possible differential diagnosis
• An in depth, two hour assessment of the child, using the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS-2) which is the gold standard diagnostic tool used to help assess for autism
• School observation (if felt necessary)
• Consultation with other professionals involved with the child/young person
• Diagnosis and feedback appointment
• Fully detailed report with recommendations which can be circulated to school and other health professionals (with parental consent)
• A post diagnostic pack including signposting to local support groups and useful resources and websites
• Further follow up appointment (as recommended by NICE guidance)
• Extra appointments can be offered but will incur further cost

Fees

• Our current fees for an autism assessment are £2400 including VAT
• A combined assessment (for autism and ADHD) can be completed for £3200 including VAT
• An individual ADHD assessment (without autism) is priced at £1950 including VAT