8 GHP Social Care Awards 2023 With the aim of helping people work through life’s challenges by providing high quality therapy and counselling services,Toad Counselling Ltd. is a private practice which works with people of all ages. From mental health issues to everyday struggles, the company can help individuals work through many different situations, emotions, behaviours, thoughts, and feelings. Here, we speak to Tony Matthews, Founder of Toad Counselling Ltd., about the company’s services, team, and plans for the future. Most Compassionate Integrative Counselling & Psychotherapy Service - Devon oing to therapy involves meeting with a qualified therapist and working with them to resolve problematic behaviours, beliefs, or feelings. Through therapy, self-destructive habits can be changed, painful feelings can be reduced, and relationships can be improved, along with other benefits. Everyone’s experience with therapy is different. From the first session, therapists work with individuals to create a plan of the steps they need to take to reach certain goals. Counselling is a talking therapy which involves a therapist trained to help individuals deal with specific issues such as depression, anxiety, an upsetting physical condition, bereavement, work-related stress, a relationship breakdown, or other difficult emotions like low self-esteem or anger. Toad Counselling is a private practice founded by Tony Matthews in 2019. Now, the practice has 4 therapists, two of which are fully qualified and two are currently in their last years of training. Tony specialises in PTSD, trauma, ASD, and ADHD, while Belinda specialises in couples counselling and bereavement. Working with children, young people, adults, and couples, including people of all ages with neurological differences, the company helps many different people. Tony comments, “The work we do is not always around mental health issues and problems, we also work with everyday issues and troubles, not being happy at work, worried about a new job and needing someone objective to speak with, bullying issues. Seeing a therapist is not confined to mental health issues, we work with life and the problems it throws at a person.” At Toad Counselling, the priority is always the clients. To offer them the best service possible, the company makes sure to keep up to date with training and always seeks to improve the skills its therapists already have. Always checking in with clients to see how they feel about the service they are being provided, the company aims to better itself by taking on board feedback and making changes accordingly. Tony’s past experiences put him in a great position to effectively manage his practice and ensure all services are of the highest standard possible. He says, “I volunteered as a therapist for over three years seeing how a practice should be run while working with the NHS as a volunteer counsellor as well which showed me various ways to manage a practice.” An advantage of opting for private therapy is that there are shorter waiting lists than there are on the NHS and with charities at the moment. Individuals can see a private therapist while they wait for free appointments to become available. However, private therapy is often not affordable to most. To address this issue, Toad Counselling takes on board capable student counsellors to help them gain their work experience hours, paying them for their work. The company then aims to keep the cost clients pay to work with one of the students as low as possible, making private therapy more affordable and accessible. In order to keep the quality of service as high as possible, Toad Counselling hires those with a passion for helping people and a compassionate, empathetic personality. New hires also need to be able to understand the needs of others, which is important when working with individuals who may be vulnerable. Moving forwards, Toad Counselling plans to keep doing the work it does, aiming to grow the business and the team by taking on more therapists. The company also has a few projects in the pipeline, including group work surrounding menopause which will cater towards both women and men, especially in terms of how it can impact a couple’s relationship. In the works, Toad Counselling also has plans for an Anger Management and Peer Support Group as well as plans to create more podcast, YouTube, and streaming content. On the future, Tony comments further, “Being a veteran myself, I have plans to restart the North Devon Military Veterans Mental Health & Peer Support Group in the area.” Thanks to Tony and his team’s outstanding work in an incredibly important field, providing high quality services and also working to make private therapy more affordable to those who need it, Toad Counselling Ltd. is 2023’s winner of Most Compassionate Integrative Counselling & Psychotherapy Service, Devon, in the Social Care Awards. With plenty of plans going forward, and lots of potential for growth in the team, there is no doubt that the company will continue to succeed throughout 2023 and beyond. Contact: Tony Matthews Company: Toad Counselling Ltd. Web Address: www.toadcounselling.co.uk G Jan23155
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