Relate & the NHS

We have a contracts across England and Wales in addition to our individual/couple counselling that we deliver.

• Through NHS 'Talking Therapies', we deliver Couples Therapy for Depression (for individuals (age 16+), couples and families).
• With our 'Reducing Parental Conflict' programmes and our 'Domestic Abuse Perpetrator Programme' delivery partners, we provide Sex Therapy (including specialist support for Compulsive Sexual Behaviour.)

Relationships, including those we have with ourselves (our internal dialogue), are vital to our mental wellbeing. People who have healthy relationships are usually happier and healthier.

Having good social networks and having a sense of community can also help to tackle loneliness and improve our mental health, including reducing our anxiety and improving mood.

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The Relate team in Norfolk & Suffolk delivers specialist relationship counselling for individuals, couples and families as part of the NHS-commissioned Talking Therapies service.

These wellbeing services are being provided in community settings free of charge for anyone aged 16 or over. As well as counselling and family therapy, a range of workshops and courses are also offered. These workshops include:

• Healthy relationships (couples, children, teenagers and families)
• Family relationships – A toolkit for parents and care givers
• Relationship breakups and how to survive them
• Intimacy, wellbeing and mental health in relationships

The service recognises how important positive relationships are to our wellbeing, and how strengthening our relationships can help to safeguard mental health and improve our emotional state. The focus is on offering help and support to improve wellbeing and manage stress, low mood, and anxiety. It also aims to reduce the onset of mental ill-health, prevent deterioration and promote recovery by providing a range of flexible services tailored to meet specific needs.

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• Improving self-esteem
• Challenging negative thinking
• Reassessing negative patterns in past relationships
• Unpacking specific issues (including affairs) in a manageable way
• Helping parents to model healthy relationships to their children
• Providing a space to learn and practice open conversations (often about difficult issues)
• Improving general communication
• Improving understanding about ourselves
• Helping clients to stop their negative behaviour pattern, e.g. by setting boundaries
• Working through disagreements and conflict in a safe way
• Ending unhealthy relationships and helping clients to move forward at the end of a relationship
• Looking ahead to learn from the mistakes of the past towards a healthier, happier future.

We are the relationship specialists. For over 80 years, we have been trusted by people all over the UK to provide support, guidance and helpful solutions to their relationship issues. From adult relationship issues and parenting problems to conflicts with colleagues, we can relate.

We pride ourselves on our trusted holistic and systemic therapy approach supporting clients through a variety of relationship and wellbeing issues which often effect work life as well as homelife.

Our dedicated and highly experienced team of counsellors are trained to work with couples enabling them to achieve the best outcomes. We can also support wider family members without the need to outsource.

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Relationship counselling really does work to help people improve their wellbeing by reducing levels of anxiety and improving mood. Under our Talking Therapy contracts every time counsellors see a client; they're asked to complete two clinical assessment forms to help the team assess their wellbeing: PHQ to assess mood and GAD for anxiety.

We regularly achieve in excess of 60% recovery rates (this means they are deemed as being well enough to be discharged from the service having recovered sufficiently). In June 2024, a 60% recovery rate was achieved and in July we achieved 67%.

Of course, not everyone achieves "recovery" as such, and this is not always a bad thing because relationship counselling can be challenging. So we also measure "reliable change" (where patients have received a helpful treatment and improved their wellbeing) and overall, the reliable change scores for the whole of 2023 and for 2024 (so far) was 76%.

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