Diane Slawinski
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This professional is available for new clients.
This professional is available for new clients.
About me
Hi, My name is Diane, and I am a qualified, experienced counsellor and I am Accredited by the BACP. I aim to offer warm, compassionate counselling sessions both face-to-face and remotely.
I work with various issues, including stress, overwhelm and low self-esteem, and I have a special focus on trauma, abuse, and difficult relationships. I have extensive experience in working with domestic and sexual abuse, and the long-term effects that this can have. Grief and loss are also key areas of my work, including loss of identity (maybe through a change in role or through illness) or loss of important relationships.
If any of this feels familiar, I can help. As your counsellor, I can offer you a space where you can explore your thoughts and feelings without any judgement. Often it can feel really important to have the opportunity to talk about what's going on for you and feel truly heard.
As we work together, counselling can help you to make sense of what's happened and find new ways to live your life.
As a counsellor, I can help you gently unpack your thoughts and feelings and make sense of them, this can help you to gain new insights, understand yourself and your needs and find a new way of moving forwards.
As a previous counselling client myself, I can understand just how difficult it can be to have counselling. Trusting another person with very sensitive information can feel so scary. Because of this, I offer a free initial consultation that lasts up to 30 minutes. This gives us the chance to get to know each other a little more and you can also ask any questions that you might have. There is no obligation for us to work together after this appointment, and everything that you say will be treated with respect.
Training, qualifications & experience
I am a qualified experienced counsellor and I am an Accredited member of the BACP. This means that I work to a Code of Ethics to help ensure that I practice safely.
As part of my development, I keep my skills and knowledge up to date by taking part in regular training sessions. These have recently included:
Exploring Trauma
Treating Shame
Working with Complex Grief
Working with Relational Trauma
Bereavement Counselling Training
I currently work with individual clients from my counselling room in Marsden. In the past, I have taught Counselling Skills at a local FE college. My previous counselling roles have included working for WomenCentre (providing specialist domestic abuse counselling), providing specialist substance addiction counselling at CHART, and counselling those affected by sexual abuse and their families at Mosaic II.
Prior to becoming a counsellor, I had over 20 years of experience in supporting people. This included working in the Probation Service, the Third Sector and Education. Throughout my career, I have supported people when they were experiencing difficult circumstances such as domestic abuse, sexual abuse, bereavement, mental illness and emotional abuse. Although these positions were in different settings, together they taught me about the importance of building relationships with the people that I work with. They also showed me just how much it mattered to be non-judgemental, and most of all to remember that we can all be vulnerable and fallible.
Member organisations
school Registered / Accredited
Being registered/accredited with a professional body means an individual must have achieved a substantial level of training and experience approved by their member organisation.
BACP is one of the UK’s leading professional bodies for counselling and psychotherapy with around 60,000 members. The Association has several different categories of membership, including Student Member, Individual Member, Registered Member MBACP, Registered Accredited Member MBACP (Accred) and Senior Registered Accredited Member MBACP (Snr Acccred).
Registered and accredited members are listed on the BACP Register, which shows that they have demonstrated BACP’s recommended standards for training, proficiency and ethical practice. The BACP Register was the first register of psychological therapists to be accredited by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA).
Accredited and senior accredited membership are voluntary categories for members who choose to undertake a rigorous application and assessment process to demonstrate additional standards around practice, training and supervision.
Individual members will have completed an appropriate counselling or psychotherapy course and started to practise, but they won’t appear on the BACP Register until they've demonstrated that they meet the standards for registration. Student members are still in the process of completing their training.
All members are bound by the BACP Ethical Framework and a Professional Conduct Procedure.
Accredited register membership
The Accredited Register Scheme was set up in 2013 by the Department of Health (DoH) as a way to recognise organisations that hold voluntary registers which meet certain standards. These standards are set by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA).
This therapist has indicated that they belong to an Accredited Register.
Areas of counselling I deal with
Other areas of counselling I deal with
I have a particular interest in working with student counsellors who are required to have personal therapy as part of their training course.
Fees
£50.00 per session
Free initial telephone session
Concessions offered for
Additional information
My fees are £50 per session
I offer a free 30-minute initial telephone consultation without obligation. Hopefully, this will give you the opportunity to ask any questions that you might have and to get to know me a little better.
I offer a small number of reduced-rate spaces to counsellors in training - please feel free to contact me for details
I also offer a small number of reduced-rate daytime sessions to those on low income - please contact me for further details.
Further information
I can offer counselling sessions to individual clients, both online and face to face.
The remote counselling sessions take place in the comfort of your own home or another area where you can have privacy. These sessions can take place over a video platform such as Zoom or over the telephone.
The face to face sessions take place at my office in the village of Marsden. Marsden has good bus and train links, and there is on-street parking nearby.