Online Support FAQs
What is online support?
Centre 33’s online counselling service is video-based one-to-one support that you can access through a web browser on a computer, mobile phone or tablet.
You may want to have counselling to help you but find the thought of sitting in a room with a practitioner feels a bit daunting. Or perhaps you’re finding that practical things are stopping you having face-to-face support, like finding time to make an appointment or transport issues that can make it hard for you to come to one of our hubs.
With online support, you will have weekly sessions by video and each session will be 50 minutes. You’ll get the same support that you would in our face-to-face services.
You can read a little more about the support here and you can read about how support tends to work best on our agreement page.
If there’s ways of working that you think might help you, we really encourage you to let us know about them too. Sometimes people use YouTube clips, songs, photos, art and more to explain how they’re thinking and feeling – you can use all of these during your support if it helps.
Why can’t I talk to someone right now?
We’re not able to respond to enquiries 24 hours a day, so we can’t offer someone to chat straight away. However, our counsellors will talk with you over a number of sessions to support you.
If you have any appointment-related or other queries, please call us 0333 414 1809 or send a WhatsApp/SMS to 07514 783745 and we’ll respond to you as soon as we can.
I need help now, what can I do?
You might be looking at this site and be feeling desperate for help. Even if it is in the middle of the night, you might feel you need help right now. If you are in crisis, feeling suicidal or having thoughts of self-harm, there is information about what to do next here.
Can I meet my counsellor in person?
Unfortunately, this isn't something we tend to do for online support.
However, if you start online support and feel that actually you’d prefer to work with someone face to face, Centre 33 offers that too. We can’t guarantee it will be the same counsellor and there will be a little wait before someone can see you face to face though.
If you do feel you'd like to meet someone face to face, do mention that to your counsellor and we'll look into how we can support this.
What happens if I don't get on with my counsellor?
This might happen. If you feel it very strongly at your first session, it may be important for you to air this right away and ask whether you can have another counsellor from the service.
We'd really encourage you to bring stuff like this up with your counsellor at any time you get concerned about it.
What happens if I tell you private stuff?
We’ve created a page just for this question! We really encourage you to read it all the way through – it explains what we do with your info and anything that you tell us.
If you’re concerned about privacy you might want to consider a few of these points:
- Try to find a quiet space and time where you’re less likely to get interrupted
- Use the private browsing function on any browser you use (it’s usually in the menu up on the top right on a PC, or the option comes up when you open more tabs on a phone browser). This is especially a good idea when using public devices such as computers at school, college or university.
- Use the Exit button on the top right of the page if you need to shut the site down. This will immediately redirect your browser to google.com.
- Remember you’ll probably get email notifications from the site, so maybe check if those appear on your lock screen on your phone, or think about anyone else who might have access to your account.
I want to give you feedback, how do I do this?
There are lots of ways that you can give us your feedback, we'd love to hear how you are finding everything. We will regularly share links to short surveys with you following sessions to give you opportunities to provide feedback throughout and at the end of support.
If you would like to give feedback right away, you can also use the feedback form at any time - navigate to About this service - Helpdesk to open the form.
If you need to make a complaint, please have a look here.