Volunteer story - Bev

Beverley runs a private counselling practice from a converted garage at home.

She was seeing clients face to face pre-Covid, but all her work more recently is via Zoom. She has been working and volunteering with the Sue Lambert Trust as a counsellor since January 2019. Bev has participated in eight years of advanced, clinical training in Transactional Analysis, and at Sue Lambert Trust, as an experienced counsellor, tends to work with very complex cases over long periods of time.

“I have some lived experience of sexual abuse and it has caused me significant difficulties. However, I was fortunate enough to get the help and support I needed and so it hasn’t blighted my life. I really understand how abuse causes men and women problems in later life, in all sorts of ways. To hear the deepest, darkest anguishes people have been holding on to, and then help them on a journey to be the person they could be, is a huge privilege.”

“Working with the trust has given me the opportunity to work with people who are motivated to make changes to their lives following their experiences of sexual and or domestic abuse; with people whose symptoms have diminished their lives – people who come to realise that with some gentle help, they have a great capacity to grow and enrich their lives.”

“Sue Lambert Trust provides a brilliantly supportive environment for counsellors as well as clients. It has excellent induction training, to find out about our client group. We receive annual safeguarding training, which is vitally important, plus there is a continuous professional development program for counsellors and staff too.

The trust also provides free individual and group supervision for counsellors every month. Because the trust is so supportive, and the work feels so important Bev has found it very heartwarming to be part of Sue Lambert Trust and feels it would be impossible not to experience that.

She said: “If anyone wants the chance to belong to something bigger than their own practice then it’s a great place to join.”