CONTRIBUTIONS TO CCL To run the various services at CCL, CCL depends on the contributions clients make. Paying for their counseling or therapy also helps clients make best use of it too.
Clients are now asked to pay for their sessions in advance according to their ability to pay. The standard rate for the first intake appointment is £29. The minimum cost per session is set at £30.
To make ends meet costs CCL over £55 for each one hour session. So the minimum is a discount rate.
However, no one in need of help is turned away. So, at the intake appointment, the counsellor and clients discuss further what is a fair rate for them and for CCL on a sliding scale. Further consideration of lower rates is also possible.
Family therapy sessions are usually longer than an hour. Sometimes clients will see two therapists as a team. So you get even more for your money from FT at CCL!
HELP TO THINK ABOUT MONEY In Britain we are all used to getting high quality expensive help free at the point of delivery. This is thanks to taxpayers, government, the NHS and other statutory services.
We and our clients may have to think afresh about the value of the kind of help you get from CCL when it is not free.
CCL cannot provide services to anyone at all if the organisation doesn't cover its costs. Fair or not, we and the world now face cutbacks in funding to all agencies including CCL.
But even before that change, taxpayers and governments wouldn't deliver personal and relationship help to everyone free like we do, in Britain, for illnesses and situations people cannot help suffering from.
THINK OF IT THIS WAY It may help you to do this thinking about money - and support the more realistic rates CCL now asks for - if you think what you might pay for a family outing, or a night out for two. It's probably in the same range of £30 minimum and more likely £50 to £100.
Next remember that the benefits of those outings last for only those few hours.
A few sessions of family therapy are often enough to make lasting positive changes for all the family for much longer ahead than that.
If you wait and risk your relationship problems getting worse, you will then have more serious suffering, risk and maybe even disorders. These may then need help from the NHS. But at that stage the help you find may be more symptom-focused and not work with relationships.
The NHS will cost you nothing of course, and you may not be able to wait either. But if you have that option, think of the other costs in trouble and delay and unhappiness and less positive kinds of solution you may need while you wait.
So there's more than you might think to the question: "What will it cost us?"