How First Steps Forward can help
Counselling, coaching and mentoring for adults and young people, specialist support around abuse and neurodiversity, supervision for counsellors, and training for organisations.
Counselling, Coaching and Mentoring
There are times when we all need a facilitator to support and encourage us, when day to day life has become too much to deal with alone. Dave will put you at the centre of the process, so you feel valued and supported, responding to your needs as they change.
It is about guiding you to find your own path, knowing there is someone beside you on the journey for as long as you need them. Dave is non-judgemental, open and honest: a critical friend, guiding you to self-healing.
Dave can move between counselling and coaching in sessions where appropriate, as both have their merits. Counselling may focus on the experiences that brought you to where you are. Coaching looks at the present and how the future may be achieved, through personal goal setting, outcomes and self-driven motivation: tangible steps towards a better life.
Mentoring is a supportive way for clients, especially those with an additional need, to focus ideas, look for alternatives and rehearse ways to move forward.
Domestic and sexual violence and abuse: partner and familial
Dave has worked alongside partner agencies with both perpetrators and people who have been victimised through violence in the home, whether partner violence, regardless of gender, or child and adolescent violence towards parents or carers.
He has delivered training to police officers on investigating violence, both as a lecturer and through a charity. He has also worked in social care, where children are often the unseen victims of parental discord, building better relationships between partners and supporting children and adults where violence at home affects them as individuals and as a family.
As a counsellor Dave has an extra insight: not only the practical experience of working with families and adults, but also a Master’s degree in Understanding Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. Where one or more of the people involved is neurodivergent, Dave can combine these specialist skills to support more effectively.
Supervision of trainee and established counsellors
Dave is a qualified Clinical Supervisor for trainee and established counsellors. Supervision is a confidential space to share how we are working with our clients, and is also about accountability, safeguarding, learning and professional development.
As counsellors we are all required to attend meaningful supervision with another experienced counsellor. It is an opportunity to discuss whether there are better ways to give our clients a better experience.
Dave sees supervision as an opportunity to grow and learn himself through working with others, while facilitating, empowering and supporting peers to develop and grow. Supervision is different from counselling, though many of the same skills are used, and needs a more stood-back way of looking at the work. Many counsellors have had poor experiences of clinical supervision, so Dave aims to offer the best he can: ethical, honest and transparent with supervisees.
Autism: corporate training, educational and social care in-service training
Dave is uniquely placed, having worked in education as a lecturer and teacher, in social care and in public services, and running a county-wide and pan-London family support team for a national Autism charity.
That work included crisis intervention and workshops to upskill parents. Dave’s experience of supporting people with SEN, neurodiversity (Autism, ADHD and more) and learning disabilities helps him pick the strategies most likely to work for each individual and family. He offers training on general or specific neurodiversity, and bespoke training built on real-life experiences and examples, teaching strategies, support and mentoring.
Neurodiversity corporate training and workplace reasonable adjustments. A dual role: informing, training and facilitating in the workplace so neurotypical staff better understand their neurodivergent colleagues, while also working with neurodivergent staff to improve their experience at work, with reasonable adjustments that support the Equality Act and a more productive, less anxious and less stressful workplace.
Not sure which you need?
Get in touch and Dave will talk it through with you. You can also see the fees and the full list of concerns he supports.