Perinatal Assessments

Before the assessment The Integrated Psychology Clinic (IPC) reviews your enquiry or referral and suggests an appropriately experienced perinatal clinician from our team who could see you. If you agree with the suggestion, we share any information about you with the clinician before they meet you.

During the Assessment
An assessment lasts for an hour, allowing us to cover a number of things including what has brought you to therapy, and a bit about you and your background.

An assessment is both an opportunity for information gathering on our part, but it also allows you to consider whether your clinician is the right therapist to work with you. Evidence shows that the quality of the relationship between a person and their therapist is a good predictor of how helpful that therapy will be.

At the end of the assessment, we aim to conclude with a summary of the problem that has brought you to us, the approach that we will use, what it is likely to involve and whether on rare occasions it will be important to involve another kind of therapist or healthcare professional in addition. Sometimes we may need to go away and reflect further on what you have told us or seek further information from you or relevant professionals before making these recommendations. We value gaining a thorough understanding about the issues, so that we can create a careful approach, tailored to you and your needs.

Very occasionally, we might suggest that a different approach or therapy is needed and make recommendations to you of alternative next steps or clinicians. However, we are nearly always able to directly help everyone who comes to see us.

We understand that having therapy when pregnant or with a baby may require some special considerations. We are always happy to have babies join sessions when needed and welcome feeding. Sometimes it can be important or beneficial to have the therapy space alone (such as during some trauma work) and we will advise on this and try and find a slot that makes it possible for this to happen.

Treatment intervention
We write short assessment reports for you, or for you to share with other professionals, when needed. If you have been referred by another clinician, we will let them know that we have met, and with your consent update them on the plan for therapy. Sometimes it is more helpful for us to write reports at a later stage of therapy.

If you decide to start therapy with us, we will try to give you an approximate idea of how many sessions may be needed. Sometimes we will book you in an ongoing basis and review progress regularly. This contract of care allows you to book regular sessions into our diary, reserving a regular space just for you and providing a sense of consistency and security, which is key in therapy. Depending on your personal situation, sessions are usually either weekly or fortnightly. Time between sessions may increase towards the end of therapy or in follow-up.

Clinical Supervision
Clinician’s will discuss your progress in therapy in confidential ‘supervision’ meetings with their ‘supervisor.’ Supervision provides a form of clinical governance and is something that all therapists have to do to ensure that we are practising to the best of our abilities. To ensure anonymity, we do not use client names in supervision meetings. Clinical supervisors have to respect all of the same standards of confidentiality as clinicians.