Andy is a humanistic counsellor and an accredited member of the UKCP. He trained at Eastleigh College in Hampshire, obtaining his diploma in 2006 and his accreditation in 2009.
Andy has accumulated a wide range of experience working in a variety of settings. He's worked individually with adolescents as a school counsellor, young adults in a youth drop-in, with young and mature adults in higher education as a student counsellor, with NHS staff as a staff counsellor and with all sorts of people in his private practices in North London and the City.
His training covered a wide range of approaches to counselling, mostly within the humanistic school, but also including an overview of behavioural and psychodynamic schools and their underlying philosophies. Andy found it empowering to be presented with such a non-judgemental and non-aligned course. The expectation was that students would find their own way of working, rather than follow a script. One consequence of this is that he feels he made a free choice of path in counselling and can fully own it.
From the start Andy was attracted to working in ways that respect individuality, which are as non-hierarchical as possible, that do not impose a "normal" onto people. This is what appeals about the humanistic approaches and the person-centred approach in particular.
Andy has since integrated many other influences into his work. He holds that the person-centred approach is at the core of his work, but believes that counselling practice can and should be informed by other models.
Andy is currently working in private practice.