How is the service funded?
Bright Light is an independent charity and not part of the Social Work Department or the Health Service. We receive small grants from the City of Edinburgh Council, West Lothian, Midlothian and East Lothian Councils, but these cover less than 15% of our running costs. We are a self-financing not for profit agency and we rely on client contributions to provide our service.
You will be asked to pay an amount between £40 and £70 per counselling session based upon your income, or household income for couples. We will ask you to pay for your appointments in advance, usually at the time of booking.
In cases of financial hardship we can consider a reduced amount, please speak to us in confidence on 0131 556 1527 and we will work with you to see what is affordable. We will not turn you away. You can also discuss this with your counsellor at your welcome meeting.
For some services, for example Sexual Relationship Therapy a fixed fee applies, in this case £55 but we will always tell you in advance if a fixed cost applies to any of our services.
Contributions can be made by credit, debit card, cheque or cash.
Please inform us as soon as possible if you need to cancel an appointment as you will be expected to contribute towards any cancelled or missed appointments.
When a counselling appointment becomes available after your intake meeting, a receptionist will phone to offer it to you. If you confirm the appointment we will ask you for a non-refundable deposit equal to your agreed payment. This will be your normal contribution for each session, usually £70, and will secure your counselling day and time for future appointments.
In your first counselling session you will make a therapeutic contract with your counsellor, part of which will be to review your regular contributions and attendance.
If you are a taxpayer you could help the service further by signing a Gift Aid Declaration form. This means that we could receive an additional 25p for every £1 you donate to us. You would only have to sign the form once. It will not cost you anything extra to do this and allows us to operate a sliding scale for contributions which makes our service more accessible.
