Through your donations the Wesley Centre for Life Enrichment is empowering individuals, couples and families to deal with life crisis. Funded with a $30,000 Give Where You Live Foundation Grant, the Wesley Centre for Life Enrichment provides professional counselling for people who face significant life challenges. The grant allows counselling sessions to be provided at a subsidised rate for those who, through financial hardship, would otherwise be unable to access the counselling support they need. 68% of Wesley Centre clients required a subsidy in 2015.
Jennifer’ came to counselling via an external agency referral, and at her ‘wits end’. An Intake session revealed a history of depression. Her partner ‘Joe’ had his own experience of past trauma and ongoing mental health issues. One of Jennifer’s children was living with extended family members. A significant amount of time and expertise in counselling was devoted to teasing out the many issues facing this family. These included:
- The effects of past family violence, abuse and trauma on relationships
- Experience of grief, loss and guilt
- Parenting issues that had arisen as a result of unaddressed personal issues
Throughout the counselling process, ‘Jennifer’ was able to gain an understanding of her children’s right to a safe, fair and respectful home life. She was able to acknowledge her own dependency needs, her lack of self-esteem and her fear of loneliness. She also became receptive to supporting ‘Joe’ to work though his own unaddressed issues in order to promote a healthy, well-balanced alliance.
Referrals were made to behaviour change and specialised therapy programs. ‘Jennifer’ was also directed to Stepfamilies Australia for support to understand the nature of blended families and acquire the skills to address the major themes impacting the family. ‘Jennifer’ has also continued to work on her own issues in counselling at the Wesley Centre.
Give Where You Live supports the complexity of counselling work with individuals, couples and their families whose lives are impacted by unaddressed generational traumas and dysfunctional family system dynamics. Without Give Where You Live’s funding contribution, many families would have no means to access this much needed service which restores life, gives hope and builds resilience in their lives.