Initial Assessment Appointment

This initial appointment is a 90 min session.

An initial assessment session is offered to parent(s)/ caregiver and adolescent. An initial appointment for an adolescent can be daunting as they are asked to meet a stranger and talk about aspects of their life. Meeting together as a family group gives me the opportunity to hear from you the adolescent and your family about adolescents strengths, important family history and the reason for support at this time. What emerges is this session is a rich story about personality traits, experiences and the wonders of skills and competencies within the family. The session is designed to be supportive to adolescent’s and adults. This beginning provides an anchor from which we can work so that we can be solution focused and not problem saturated from the outset. You are given an initial assessment sheet to complete prior to your appointment so that you can give me all the necessary information about your adolescents behavioural and learning style. Therapy can sometimes be daunting and not everyone may agree it is a good idea. Everyone gets the opportunity in this session to meet with me and understand how therapy works. If adolescent therapy feels right, we arrange for an adolescent to move to the next stage which is one to one sessions. Further family sessions may be arranged during therapy in consultation with adolescents and adults.