WHO IS IT FOR?

Online counselling can be used when trying to deal with any of the issues mentioned earlier, such as depression, anxiety, panic, stress, relationship or marital difficulties etc. It is sometimes not a suitable medium for conducting counselling, depending on an individual's presenting issues and on the person's personal circumstance.

Before beginning a course of online therapy we need you to submit an initial Registration Form. You can download the form, complete it on your PC, and email it back to us as an attachment. You will be contacted within twenty-four hours by one of our counsellors, who will advise as to whether online counselling is appropriate. If a decision is made that online counselling is not suitable, every effort will be made to refer you to a more appropriate service.

To avail of online counselling you will need to have access to an internet connection and an email account. Payments are processed online using a secure service (PayPal), and all communications and records are securely stored and password protected.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

At CounsellorsOnline.ie we offer two forms of online Therapy:

• Email Counselling using a secure and encrypted Email facility 
• Instant Messaging Counselling using a secure and encrypted Chat facility 

Description and Fees

EMAIL

Email therapy involves a client sending an email to their therapist, having the email read and considered by the therapist, and then receiving the therapist's response.

Email packages:

Email Basic.

The basic email package is charged per the counsellors time. The rate is €55 per hour of the therapist's time. The time spent by the therapist reading, considering and responding to the client’s emails is quantified and taken from the prepaid hour. This ‘hour’ could last several days, depending on how frequently you email the therapist and on how detailed your emails are.  The therapist guarantees to respond to your email within 72 hours of receipt.

Email Plus.

This package offers the client six email communications with their therapist within a four week period, with a guaranteed response time of 72 hours,  and is charged at a total of €285. This price is all inclusive and is not time restricted. This package may be suitable for people who do not wish to be limited by time or content amount when communicating with their therapist.

Email Premium.

This package offers the client ten email communications with their therapist within a four week period, with a guaranteed response time of 48 hours, and is charged at a total of €380.

CHAT/INSTANT MESSAGING

Instant messaging or chat counselling is conducted in real-time. A pre-arranged session time will be agreed with your counsellor and your hour will be used in one consecutive block.  Instant messaging or chat sessions are charged at €55 per hourly session.

Safeguards 

Although email messages can be vulnerable to interception the risks can be greatly reduced by using a password for entry to your computer and frequently changing it. It is important that you make appropriate arrangements for storing our correspondence privately, especially if other people can access your emails or hard copies (at work, at college, or at home, for example). Your communications with us are kept in a locked, password protected, scrambled and encrypted folder. We advise you not to spend too long in front of a computer screen for Health and Safety reasons and please remember to take regular breaks.   

Confidentiality and privacy 

Confidentiality is very important in counselling and it’s essential for you to feel safe when talking about very private and sensitive issues. Under normal circumstances nothing you say to us will be taken outside of the service without your explicit consent. All counsellors regularly discuss and assess their work with the help of a clinical supervisor, where care is taken not to identify individual clients.  

We are committed to respecting your privacy and to ensuring that your counselling with us remains completely confidential. All our counsellors work to the Irish Association of Counselling & Psychotherapy Code of Ethics, which requires that your confidentiality is protected unless in exceptional circumstances such as being required by law to do so, or if one of our counsellors becomes seriously concerned about a risk to your health and safety or that of others. It is only in extreme and exceptional circumstances that this would be done without your consent. We would also request that you do not share any of the online communications that take place between us with anyone else, particularly email addresses or personal details of any counsellors that you may become aware of during your work with them or indeed, the emailed or I.M. responses of your counsellor, without first seeking the consent of CounsellorsOnline.ie.  

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