Counselling in the comfort of your own home

Fees

The fees for new clients are listed below. NDIS clients are charged at the same rate as privately funded clients.

Sessions for individuals (1:1)

Individual sessions - 60 minutes
During business hours: $200
Outside business hours $220

Relationship Counselling &
Parent Coaching
60 minutes
During business hours: $250
Outside business hours $275

Individual sessions - 90 minutes
During business hours: $275
Outside business hours $300

Sessions for 2 people

Relationship counselling: couples / parent-child
Parent coaching: 2 parents

Relationship Counselling &
Parent Coaching
90 minutes
During business hours: $340
Outside business hours $375

Please advise at the time of booking if you require a 90 minute session.

  • Any session that starts after 9am and finishes before 5pm will be charged business hours.

  • Individual counselling is a session that only you attend. The topic of the counselling session can be about anything, including relationships.

    Currently, I only offer sessions to people who are 16+.

  • Relationship counselling is where you attend with another person to work on the relationship. There does not have to be a conflict that you want to solve, but that is often why people end up coming.

    There are lots of reasons to go to relationship counselling. Some of the reasons you might go:

    • you are in a new relationship and you want to establish how the relationship will work

    • one or more people in the relationship are Autistic/ADHD (or other neurodivergences), and you need help to do relationships differently or be supported in conversations

    • you think the relationship could be better and want some help to explore different ways to improve the relationship

    • your relationship is going awesome, but you want to set aside some time to honour each other and dig deeper in conversation with one another

    • You are separating, but still want (or need) to communicate well through the separation.

  • Parent coaching is when both parents come to sessions with the intent to improve their parenting. This work will likely include individual exploration and relationship dynamics between the partners as well.

    If only one parent intends to come to parent coaching this can be booked under individual sessions.

  • Sessions are either 60 or 90 minutes.

    The session will start from the time you have booked for.

    The session time will also include the time it takes to make a booking for the next session and to take payment.

  • Best is what works for you.

    Most people find that an hour is sufficient. For individuals, if you are new to counselling, I would suggest you start with an hour.

    Relationship counselling sometimes benefits from longer sessions because it gives each person more time to talk in session.

    Some individuals, especially those who have done counselling before, may know that they prefer longer sessions. This can sometimes be helpful in enabling deeper work.

  • Currently, I will only do family counselling with 2 members of the family (e.g. 1 parent & child).

    I am only seeing children 16+.

  • This depends on you and what you are coming to counselling for.

    I tend to focus on more in-depth work, but I will also be guided by you and the goals that you set.

    You are also not locked into a number of sessions.

  • I see most people on a fortnightly basis.

    I usually book people on the same day/time to create consistency and predictability for you. However, if you work shiftwork and you need to change the day/time I can accommodate that too.

    If you would like sessions more frequently, please let me know.

  • This will depend on the goals and funding in your plan.

    NDIS clients are charged the same as non-NDIS clients.

    Plan managed clients

    My counselling rate is higher than the NDIS-capped rate. To accommodate for this, your invoice will include 2 x charges:

    1 x counselling fee at the NDIS max rate

    1 x travel charge if you are having in-person sessions
    or

    1 x non-face-to-face service charge if you are having zoom sessions

    The total will be the same as listed in the pricing tables and is the same as for privately funded clients.

    Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or concerns.

  • In the first session, I will ask you to sign a counselling agreement.

    This covers a lot of the administrative aspects of our professional relationship, like payment of fees, cancellations, limits of confidentiality and more.

    If you have any questions or concerns about this, we can also talk about this. I am always happy to give examples or explain things further.

    If you are doing a ZOOM session, I will send you an agreement to be signed.

    For NDIS clients, this counselling agreement will serve as your service agreement.

  • I will ask you about what has brought you to counselling to help me figure out how I can best support you.

    You don’t need to do any preparation for any of your answers, but if you find prompts helpful, you might consider these:

    • What is the key issue that made you look for a counsellor?

    • How long has it been going on for?

    • If the issue has existed for a while, was there a catalyst that prompted you to seek counselling now?

    • Has anything changed since you booked the session?

  • Now that I know what has brought you to counselling, I will want to know more about how we should use our time together.

    This is important because I don’t have a predetermined destination in mind for you - I want you to decide where you want to go. And if you don’t know - which does happen, that’s okay. That might be part of the work for us to figure that out.

    Again you don’t have to do any preparation work for this before your session, but if you find prompts helpful, these might help:

    • What does success look like for you?

    • Imagine we have finished our counselling; ideally, what would be different?

  • You might already know some things that work well or don’t work well for you. I want to work with you in a very individualised way, so knowing this is helpful for me.

    If you have had counselling before, these some prompts that might help with answering this questions:

    • What has worked well for you in counselling previously?

    • What would you want to do more of?

    • What hasn’t worked well in counselling previously?

    • What do you definitely do not want to do?

  • I will usually check in if there is something specific that you want to bring to the session to explore. I find that being explicit about what you want the session to be about can help with a sense of purposefulness of the sessions. Some people find it helpful to set an agenda for the session.

    Not everyone finds this way of working helpful, or they are not sure how to do it - and that is okay. If this is you we will work together to find ways to determine what we spend the session on. This might look like:

    • reviewing the last week/fortnight

    • identifying issues or wins that have happened

    • doing check-ins with yourself (physically and/or emotionally) to see what you notice

    • Talking about what it is like to come to counselling but not know what to talk about

    This is your session, and we can spend the time on what you find necessary. I believe everything can have a purpose in our counselling sessions.

  • I use a range of counselling methods because I want to adapt my style to your needs.

    For more about how I work visit my About Me page

  • Psychoeducation means to give you information. It is a type of counselling strategy. It is used to help build insight, normalise your experiences, and give you a name for your experiences and ways of being in the world.


    This might look like:

    As my special interest in counselling is in Autism and ADHD, this can be very helpful for those people, because I name and frame these experiences from a neuroaffirming perspective.

    Specific to Autistics and ADHDers, psychoeducation might also look like preparing for the diagnostic journey by unpacking life experiences and seeing if/how they fit into diagnostic criteria. We can also look at potential consequences of diagnosis (positive and negative) and other elements of diagnosis.

    As part of psychoeducation, I might refer you to other resources.

  • Depending on the content of our sessions, I might use different check-ins.

    Check-ins might look like:

    • subjective rating scales

    • informal screening tools, like the DAS-21

    • open-ended questions

    • noticing questions

    This helps us both to check where you are in the session, but also give us some data over the longer term to help observe and measure change.

    Lots of strategies depend on you noticing what is happening for yourself, so building this as a habit of mind can be very helpful in applying the relevant strategy.

  • I will often ask reflective questions throughout the session. This is to help you stop and take note. The brain also makes connections between things when it is asked to reflect, so like check ins, this is a helpful habit to develop.

    Some people find it particularly hard to reflect on the counselling session at the end of their session. Again this is totally okay - you might find that your make the connection later or we find alternate ways to reflect.

  • Homework

    Formal homework is usually counsellor directed and not individualised, for example a worksheet for you to do during the week.

    I rarely set formal homework because it is rarely helpful for neurodivergents. For many people it also activates their perfectionist or people pleasing parts. For PDAers it will just feel like being told what to do and can cause resistance.

    I don’t believe it’s usually necessary to set homework, because transferring what you are learning and experiencing in counselling will transfer into real life when you are ready or when it is safe. (And we can talk more about this process in sessions if you want to).

    I do, however, work with you on developing individualised strategies and we talk about how you might practice them outside the counselling room as well. This allows you to set the pace and to come back for feedback and guidance, in a very safe and self-directed manner.

  • Relationship counselling & parent coaching works a little bit differently from individual counselling. So, whilst we might still use all the tools I have listed above, there will be some distinct differences.

    Depending on what you bring for discussion on the day and what your overall goals for counselling are, this might look like:

    • digging deep into exploring a strategy

    • having a guided conversation, and focusing on implementing strategies that you are working on (e.g. reflective listening or soft start-ups)

    • getting a deeper understanding of the origin of issues, exploring individual perspectives and impacts

    • exploring how different neurotypes or differences within the same neurotype impact the relationship and ways to work through this

  • In an ideal world, we would plan for when the last session would be so that we could have the opportunity to reflect and plan. This is especially helpful if you have been doing long-term counselling (10 sessions +).


    This is not always possible. Sometimes people have to stop counselling suddenly because their financial situation changes, they move away, or there are schedule changes. Some people feel a bit akward to end so they don’t want to tell me it’s their last session. If for whatever reason you have to stop counselling more suddenly, I would encourage you to spend some time on these aspects, perhaps through journalling or discussing with someone.


    How will I know I am ready to end counselling?

    Most people can feel when they are ready to stop having counselling on a regular. basis. And this is usually when they have had sustained change outside of the counselling sessions and they now feel comfortable going on more independently. If you are not sure, make sure to bring it to counselling and we can talk about it!

    Can I have reduced sessions instead of ending?

    Yes! This can be a very gentle way to end counselling. Some people like to stay on irregular sessions (e.g. quarterly).

    Will you ever end the counselling relationship?

    This is sometimes necessary, but it is something I will talk to you about if it happens. Some people have been fired by counsellors or other allied health in the past, and it can be really traumatic. It is especially common for Autistics/ADHDers and those with complex trauma. If this is you, feel free to bring it up with me in our first, or any session, so that we can talk through this in more depth.

  • It can be helpful to look back at where you started and to see how far you have come. This might look like thinking back to:

    • why you first came to counselling

    • your first session

    • moments that stand out to you

    • changes that you can identify in yourself and what helped you create those changes

    • things that were helpful for you in the counselling sessions

    • things that were not helpful for you in the counselling sessions

    You might also want to reflect on what ending feels like:

    • How do you feel about ending this counselling relationship?

  • Moving from having regular counselling to not may feel like a really big step! Like all of a sudden, you are on your own.

    Even if you do feel confident about moving forward, there are some things that you might want to plan ahead for:

    • How will you know it’s time to come back to counselling (thinking about triggers, life circumstances, issues resurfacing, reduced mood, etc)?

    • How will you maintain your changes, what preventative/proactive things will be helpful?

    • What do you need to do well?

    You might have some specific things you want to plan for and we can discuss those also.

The first session

Subsequent sessions

The last session

Tips for counselling at home or on Zoom

  • Make sure there is a quiet space where you can talk confidentially and feel comfortable.

  • If needed, discuss this with other people in the house, so that they can be sure to give you privacy during your counselling session.

  • If needed, use white noise to create extra privacy (Youtube has a selection of playlists you can play on your phone). If you are on Zoom, it will filter out background noise so the listener will not hear the white noise in the background.

  • You are not expected to entertain, the counsellor is there to provide you with a therapeutic service.

  • Have the things you need during your session ready (water, tissues, notepad and pen).