Dr Nina Jones and Jonathan Ruchpaul are in the final stages of incorporating the Bristol Family Therapy Collective, a community interest company that will facilitate the delivery of family therapy on a pro bono basis so that families (or the couples or individuals involved within it) who would struggle to find the resources to benefit from family therapy will be able to be funded, or partly funded by fee-paying clients who are in a position to contribute.

To get an idea of what family therapy might address, just think of the complexities that go to make a family (of whatever shape or form), and of all the relationships and individuals involved in it. Then think of all the circumstances that life will inevitably impose upon those individuals and their relationships, and the breadth of the subject becomes more clear. Families change and develop and, of course, just one cause can have many effects within them so finding a way to identify and address these may need expert help.

Community Interest Companies are limited companies which operate to provide a benefit to the community they serve. Their purpose is primarily one of community benefit so the ethos of the Bristol Family Therapy Collective speaks for itself.

Nina can be contacted here: ninajones.bftc@gmail.com

NHS 111 has joined Scotland and Wales in offering mental health advice and practical help alongside the ‘physical’ advice and help available previously.

This is obviously a step in the right direction as the NHS is not able to cope with the prompt provision of mental health services. The charity MIND estimates that about two million people are on NHS mental health services waiting lists.

The service is also able to offer advice and practical help for children.

111, mental health option, will now put people in touch with trained call handlers, mental health nurses and clinicians, at any time of day or night, and there is a talking-therapy service too which is available through nhs.uk.

The Balloon Festival is Bristol’s biggest outdoor event and has had to weather
(forgive the pun) a series of wet and windy festival dates and from unforeseen ‘show stoppers’ like the COVID pandemic so it was a treat to see the balloons drifting over the suspension bridge, over the Harbourside Practice and on towards Hanham and Bath on Saturday 10 August 2024.

A characteristically Bristol event and an opportunity to use a photograph to associate Redcliffe, Bristol Talking Therapy Rooms and our sister consulting rooms, the Harbourside Practice, with it.

We’ve invested in some new pictures – all of Bristol or its surrounds – by local artist Emy Lou Holmes.

Emily is an illustrator from Clevedon who now lives and works in Bristol. She creates illustrations of local towns and cities and retro-inspired images. Her artwork is made up of digital illustrations, drawn on her IPad and edited in photoshop. The pictures reflect her interest in  60s & 70s aesthetics and she collects vintage fabrics and wallpapers to collage into her work. We like the ‘local-ness’ of the pictures and the fact that they are somehow contemporary despite the retro inspiration.

We put up a number of nesting boxes earlier in the year and Julie Gresty, one of our counsellors, used her photography skills to capture this charming picture of a male blue tit feeding a female in the garden as she (hopefully) incubates a clutch of eggs.

Blue tits apparently lay a large number of eggs, possibly as many as eleven or twelve so we’re looking forward to seeing the young birds soon.

In August 2018 Bristol’s planning department gave permission to use the top two floors in our building for counselling and psycho-therapeutic work. No. 3 Redcliffe Parade East is physically divided into two self-contained units and we have the downstairs two floors. The two upstairs floors will be a separate suite of 3 new counselling rooms and a waiting room and will bring a much needed resource to Redcliffe, the city centre, and southern Bristol.

The planning process has delayed commissioning the new rooms which has had a knock-on effect, but they should be operational in the New Year, providing counselling rooms and a space for small groups (CPD  etc).  We look forward to it.