Cornerstone Counselling - A History

Cornerstone is our local counselling agency, based here in Yateley, working under the authority of the Vicar of St Peter’s Church. All the counsellors are Christian and we serve those of any or no faith.

Back in the 1980’s, Revd Harry Wilson commissioned a feasibility study to look at what St Peter’s needed. It was decided that a counselling centre was a priority, to serve both the church and local community, as one of the five fingers of the church’s “Healing hand”. The steering group then determined to find a professional training that would produce counsellors who could set up such a centre to serve the local populace. The Clinical Theology Association (CTA, now known as the Bridge Pastoral Foundation, BPF) was willing to send trainers to the group of 12 people wanting to learn and so began the journey of Cornerstone being born.

The training entailed two years of fortnightly 3-hour seminars, with growth group weekends and a further year of ongoing experiential work. The student, then newly qualified, counsellors were expected to have their own counselling, both to support their learning and to give them insight into how to counsel and what it’s like to be counselled. Once qualified and taking clients, the counsellors were and are required to have supervision for a minimum of 1½ hours a month.  We also commit to ongoing professional development, attending workshops, conferences and weekend trainings regularly each year.

We work ‘non-directionally’ in that we do not tell clients what to do; more listening to what they themselves think are the problems, looking at options as to how to deal with them and supporting clients as they make choices and decisions, encouraging them to take personal responsibility for their outcomes.

Cornerstone today is made up of a group of seven counsellors supported by two supervisors. There are two Co-directors, and, at present, we are supporting three student counsellors through their training. We each have a prayer partner to support our work (without being informed of any details of clients) and we meet four times a year for an evening service of Communion or Compline.

Established in July 1988, Cornerstone’s vision was, and is, to help people who were suffering, offering a much needed, discreet, confidential and professional counselling service to the church and local community. That local community sometimes reaches as far as Maidenhead, Bracknell, Reading, Basingstoke and Woking. We are a group of trained counsellors who are willing to come alongside an individual or couple in their pain, sadness or struggle, for part of their life journey, gently assisting them to find their own solutions.

We thank God for our 21st anniversary over the weekend of 9-11 October 2009, which we celebrated with an Open Day plus a Celebration and Re-commissioning Service at St Peter’s Church. We welcomed Rev Harry Wilson and Rev Jean Cook, since they were both party to Cornerstone’s beginning.