Is there anything more important than wellness?

Has your wellbeing fallen between the gaps? Are you stuck on a hamster wheel? Can you dare to hope for better things? To be in control of your life?

If so…

Can we help you in any way? Can we help make a difference? Can we offer you emotional shelter? Can we give you some time-out from your day-to-day life? Can we give you a safe space – in which to heal, to recover, to grow, to view life from a different angle? Can we be the ones to support you through a rough patch?

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Who are we? What do we do?

Community Counselling Cooperative was set up in 2012 to provide emotional and psychological support to individuals who would otherwise have no access to counselling. Since then, we have expanded our scope to offer a wider, wraparound service for individuals and cohorts within our neighbourhoods. Here is what we can offer:

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One-to-one counselling for children, young people and adults, either from our central Newcastle base or in your community.

Family work. If there has been a rupture within a household, can we help to repair it?

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Group work. This is where individuals can support one another, through mutual aid, within a safe, facilitated space.

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Self-detective resources.

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Since 2016 we have been building up a library of interactive materials for everyday people. These are designed to act as a springboard for individuals wishing to do some good self-awareness work on themselves and their own wellbeing, before, during and after counselling - or even as a substitute to therapy.

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Workshops. We have knowledge around a whole host of practical, wellness-focused subjects that might be useful to you and your organisation. For example: How to set up safe spaces. How to improve relations using person-centeredness. The process of change. Working Through Trauma. Self-empowerment. All training is carried out in an experiential fashion, with takeaway resources.

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Good-enough facilitation. For the past five years we have been training up self-selecting empaths to do some good-enough facilitation work in their own settings, whether it be group work, supported learning, mentoring/championing or a blended approach.

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In mid-2025 we will be launching a podcast called The Self Detective Club. Here we will not only be sharing the jewels to improved self-awareness and self-empowerment, but we’ll also be inviting everyday people to share their own lived-experiences - to further enhance the listeners understanding of what makes us tick, and what could make us tick better.

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Our projects

Turnaround toolkit

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This project was set up 12 years ago to support people in the criminal justice system who wanted to turn their lives around.

The philosophy behind this venture was a recognition that everyone who comes into therapy possesses tools that can help them move forward in some way. Through self-awareness these natural resources can be harnessed long after the counselling sessions have run their course.

Bright Eyed & Bushy Tailed

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Bright Eyed & Bushy Tailed is where children and young people come for counselling, play therapy or peer support work. This is where talking and drawing, moving and playing, digging and dreaming can all take place - if you want it to.

School counselling

We have the capacity to provide schools with an embedded child counsellor/play therapist. We currently work within five schools across the region.

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Children affected by domestic abuse

We are funded to work in Gateshead and South Tyneside to provide therapeutic support to children who, in the words of Psychologist John Bowlby, have ended up “knowing what you are not supposed to know and feeling what you are not supposed to feel.”

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Family Rupture & Repair + SD need thread rupture repair img

The structure of these family sessions are needs-focused. We build a safe, playful space where family members are encouraged to find their voice and have their hurt recognised, validated and healed.

Pathways to restoration, resolution, reconciliation, forgiveness and self-forgiveness come from all sorts of activities, exercises and discussions, held together by trained therapeutic facilitators.

‘Man’s Hour’

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There is evidence to suggest that men, who would otherwise benefit from counselling, often don’t make that initial call because they don’t think it’s for them.

The banner ‘Man’s Hour’ is a statement of intent from us to let men know this is a service tailored specifically to them – and it’s now in it’s 10th year!

Private counselling

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We are a team of fully qualified and experienced counsellors, committed to improving the lives of people in our community. Each of us have different skills and a unique way of counselling. [Meet the team].

You can set up an initial inquiry by emailing us at info@communitycounsellingcooperative.co.uk

Our areas of expertise

Our work is carried out within health, education, the criminal justice system, the workplace, as well as in partnership with the voluntary sector.

Over the years we have been commissioned to trial new projects to help alleviate the suffering within our communities. This has involved us exploring new threads of inquiry, tentatively exploring different interventions, all the while guided by the feedback of our service users.

These are our main areas of expertise…

Men, women and children affected by domestic/sexual abuse

People/Young people engaged in the criminal justice system

Family/relationship breakdowns

Addiction.

Neurodiversity

Suicidal ideation

Trauma/adverse childhood experiences/complex needs

Refugees

As well as the more common labels of anxiety, stress and depression, bereavement, anger and self-worth

Our team

We have lovely group of diverse counsellors, each with their own unique way of working therapeutically, each of them able to offer specialised and differentiated support to clients...

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Our partners

Here are some of the partners who have invested in our work over the years. Would you like to become a partner? If you believe we share similar interested, would you be interested in having a chat as seeing where it ends up?

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Our shop

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We have an Etsy marketspace full of bite-sized resources for anyone wishing to do some good detective work on their own wellbeing, or the wellbeing of others – either at home or in the workplace. This includes lots of easy-to-use activities, exercises, thought-provoking topics, question cards, and much more besides.

Our values

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CCC is a not-for-profit worker’s cooperative. We are a flat hierarchy. We have no CEO and no shareholders. Instead, we have plenty of stakeholders who are able to shape the way we work and the direction we travel. Decisions are made consensually.

Are we merely using our counselling skills to mop up the ills of society? Or can we hope for more? We’d like to think that we can assist people to become a force for good in their own lives, able to stand independently on their own two feet, able to determine and future-proof their own wellbeing - by harnessing their own skills and tools and following their own therapeutic journey.

Our nouns

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Community Counselling Cooperative

Shelter Healing Harmonious

Human-sized Exploring Collaborative

Civic-minded Assistance Supportive

United Change Sharing

Social group Empathic Mutual-aid

Commonality Growing Collective

Bonds Learning Consensus

Local Empowering Inclusive

Grassroots Person-centred Diverse

Power-with Power-within Power to

Our inspirational figures.

Will do a quote below each of them (TBA) Carl Rogers. Hannah Arendt. Eric Berne. Carl Jung. Virginia Axeline. Donald Winnicott. Colin Ward. David Graeber. Noam Chomsky. Bell Hooks.

And, of course, all our clients and group participants for helping to shape our work and widen our reach and keep us on our toes.

Future stuff: side bar stamps/thumbnails. Jelly babies?