The Charity for Civil Servants supports all current, former and retired civil servants throughout their lives, when times are tough, listening without judgement and offering financial and practical support.
The Charity has a partnership with Relate to provide special access to free personal and confidential relationship support and counselling to support civil servants.
What can Relate help with?
We recognise that life can be difficult and dealing with life’s pressures can be hard on those closest to you.
Through Relate’s professional counselling service, the Charity offers civil servants additional support to explore complex or difficult issues in a safe and confidential, non-judgmental environment.
Issues may be related to some of the following topics:
- Conflict with family members
- Loneliness
- Coming to terms with loss/grief
- Sexuality
- Finding and sustaining a relationship
- Pressure of work affecting a relationship
- Overcoming relationship breakdowns and how to move on
- External factors affecting relationships, e.g., money issues, addiction
- Not getting on with a partner; fear a relationship is over
- Pressures around starting a family
- Affairs
- Becoming a carer for a family member and the impact on the relationship.
What’s on offer?
Relationship Counselling
Whether you’re facing difficulties in your relationship or you'd just like to get to know your partner better, Relationship Counselling can make a real difference.
Counselling provides a supportive, confidential and caring environment in which you can talk over any problems and think about ways to address them.
The Charity for Civil Servants can pay for up to six Relationship Counselling sessions.
Family Counselling
Families can be a source of support, encouragement and love, but sometimes relationships within families are put under strain and family members feel overlooked or misunderstood.
Family Counselling is available for nuclear and extended family members, separated parents, children and step families attending together or at different times. The focus is on providing counselling within a family system to improve relationships.
Up to six Family Counselling sessions are available.
Children and Young People’s Counselling
Children and Young People's Counselling is available for children or young people experiencing challenges in their lives. Whether it's depression, anger issues, mental health concerns or issues with parents or people at school.
The Charity for Civil Servants can pay for up to six sessions.
Sex Therapy
Sex Therapy can help if you're experiencing difficulties in your love life and can help you to improve physical intimacy. Civil servants and their partners can access up to six free sessions.
How is counselling delivered?
All the available services can be delivered over the phone, by video call or face-to-face, meaning you can get in touch whichever way suits you best, even if you are deployed overseas.
Who is eligible to access the Support Services?
All Relate support services are available to current, former and retired civil servants and their dependants. Whether you're married, living together, in a same-sex relationship, separated, divorced, widowed or single, we can help.
To find out more about accessing support please visit: https://foryoubyyou.org.uk/digital-tools/relate-counselling or call 0800 056 2424.
Are these services confidential?
Relate counselling is a private and confidential form of help. We hold information about each of our clients and the counselling they receive in confidence. This means that we will not normally give your name or any information about you to anyone outside the organisation.
However, there are exceptional cases where Relate might ethically or legally have to give information to relevant authorities, for example, if we had reason to believe that someone, especially a child, is at serious risk of harm or to prevent a miscarriage of justice.
We will discuss any proposed disclosure with you unless we believe that to do so could increase the level of risk to you or to someone else.
Where Relate are providing the counselling on behalf of an employer/funder, the employer/funder may provide Relate with a unique reference number for each client.
This allows Relate to work with the employer/funder, where a client may require further sessions and Relate need to seek permission to do so by providing the unique reference number and a rationale. In all cases, the confidential details of the sessions will not be shared with the employer/funder.
How to access the services
To apply, follow this link https://foryoubyyou.org.uk/digital-tools/relate-counselling and complete the application form.
Or call the dedicated freephone number for assistance with your application on 0800 056 2424.