How New Dawn Family Support Service Works.
In your family, or in a family that you know, is there a child or young person (may be more than one) living with a condition that affects their health and well being? It may be that an adult in the family has the condition. We encounter many different conditions - see our conditions encountered page.

Whether the condition is life threatening or not, nevertheless it has a profound influence on the whole family. The diagnosis and treatment of the condition calls for the intervention of professionals from a variety of agencies. Your calendar becomes dominated by appointments, clinics and consultations. Each day is punctuated by a routine of medication or exercises and journeys between school or nursery and home. Someone in the family has the job of the principal carer.

Relationships within the family may become strained. Other children may feel left out – confused. Everyone feels exhausted. The condition demands so much from everyone.

At New Dawn we help many families through family counselling. We seek to work with whole families and individuals who are challenged by a situation such as this.

Talk to us. We will listen, and where we can help we will.
It may be that counselling with New Dawn will provide the best help for you, or there may be other specialised agencies to consider. We can look at those options with you.

Just get in touch by ‘phone or e-mail or letter, and we will try to meet you to talk things over. We usually suggest that we visit you at home to make it easier for you.

Have a look at what some of our families have said about New Dawn. Go to the webpage Testimonials.

What will it cost?
We are a voluntary service funded by donations.
We make no fixed charges for the service but we rely on people making contributions according to their circumstances, and no-one is turned away for reasons of money.

Who are we?
The team have varied life experiences in different walks of life, and everyone who works with families has training in counselling. Some of our team have faced difficulties similar to yours.
We operate within the guidelines of the professional bodies AFT¹ and BACP²  , assuring standards of best practice.

Where are we?
New Dawn is based in the counties of Leicestershire and Rutland working in alliance with

• The Glebe House Project, Loughborough
• British Red Cross Special Needs Family Support Centre, Oadby
• The Parks School Parents’ Group, Oakham, Rutland
• Barnardos Carefree, Enderby.

We also use other convenient venues for meetings with families. See webpage Our Territory

We did a survey to find out how effective was the New Dawn service. We called the survey How Are We Doing?  It showed us what benefits people derive from working with us. Of course every individual differs in their needs, and so the benefits they derive will vary accordingly. We found, however, that benefits reported in the survey could be grouped into distinct categories:

• Being heard.
• Finding solutions from within.
• Exploring different perspectives.
• Being valued.
• Seeking ones own identity.
• Encouragement.
• Empowerment.
• Building self-esteem.
• Evolving future visions and horizons

These benefits validate the work of New Dawn. All forms of counselling aim to achieve the same kinds of results.
 
Being heard and listened to is the key element in telling the family’s story – their narrative. Members of a family each have a part of the story to tell, and the parts flow together to produce the family narrative. Each part adds richness to the story, and members of the family hear and learn how important those differences can be in changing the course of events, however bad things are.