Family Counselling

Family Counselling and Family Therapy service Perth, Applecross and Fremantle

Family therapy with an experienced Family Therapist helps family members, couples and others who care about each other to express and explore difficult thoughts and emotions safely, to understand each other’s experiences and views, appreciate each other’s needs, build on strengths and make useful changes in their relationships and their lives.

Family systems are complex, and involve many individuals. To be able to create change in this system, working as a family and identifying each individual’s contribution to conflict and disharmony is the most effective method to resolve issues. In fact, understanding how each person relates emotionally and to identify expectations of each other in their relationships is the beginning of sustainable changes. Rather than just trying to fix the person with the behavioural or emotional problems, family therapy works on the whole family system.

Family therapy helps change the broken patterns of communication and the sense of isolation, fear, abandonment, and any number of other challenges that families face. Family counselling is not always fun and exciting, but the research indicates that family therapy produces lasting improvements for families who come in.

How can Family Counselling help?

Family therapy is useful for the following issues:

• Health problems (i.e., chronic illnesses)
• Child and Adolescent Mental Health
• Behavioural problems in children
• Anger management problems
• Adult mental health
• Foster care and adoption
• Co-parenting and separation issues
• Work related problems
• Traumatic experiences
• Parenting skills and family functioning
• Marital difficulties including separation and divorce
• Sexual abuse

How does Family Therapy work?

A family therapy session usually lasts between 50-75  minutes; the intervals between sessions are from one to several weeks depending on the presented problems, the needs of the family members, the stage of the treatment and other variables. Decisions over these matters are negotiated collaboratively with clients and any other involved professionals. Although it is hard to estimate, and it differs widely, the average length of family therapy treatment ranges between 6 – 20 sessions.

Family counsellors most often work with more than one family member in the room but individual sessions, or meetings with parents separate from children for example, are also offered when appropriate.