Hello and welcome to the Domestic Violence Counselling Service at the University of Salford. We are a specialist counselling service working with people who are currently safe, but continue to feel the emotional pain of their abusive experiences.

The safety of everyone who visits this site is important to us, we have provided some guidance on how you can browse this site safely

If you are currently in an abusive situation and feel that you and/or your family members are at risk of harm now, we ask you to go to our section on accessing other support services, where you will find contact details for a number of agencies in the Greater Manchester area and across the UK. They will be able to offer you practical help and support for your current situation, which we cannot. 

We welcome people into the service irrespective of, for example, gender, race or sexuality. Here is more about our client requirements. We believe that domestic abuse is about power and control, with abusers using whatever works best when trying to control their partner. This may be physical violence, but it can also be emotional, psychological, financial and sexual abuse. Every relationship is different and it is important that we work with your own experience and how it affected you.

Within the service, we have a team of over 20 people, a mix of qualified and trainee counsellors, coming from diverse backgrounds. All of our counsellors have had an additional 42 hours of training in working with survivors of domestic violence, so that they can understand what happens in a domestically abusive relationships and some of the challenges that people can face in accessing support and sharing their experiences (link to why use a specialist service). When you decide to access the service, please make sure you read the client information sheet first to make sure the service is right for you, then fill in the self-referral form with as much detail as you feel comfortable to provide. You will be invited to an assessment session with one of qualified counsellors. This will be an opportunity for you to ask any questions you may have about the service as well as to help us to check our service is suitable for you and to match you with one of our counsellors. The service has counselling available Monday to Thursday from 10am to 5pm (last appointment at 4pm) and on Monday from 5pm-8pm (last appointment 7pm). This provides quite a lot of flexibility to find a time that works for you.

Our approach to counselling is based on our research over the last 10 years with individuals who accessed counselling after experiencing domestic violence, identifying what helped. Our training and service approach is based on that research and is unique in the UK. We continue to conduct research from time to time within the Service. Should you be asked to participate, it is important that you know that this is entirely voluntary and you will continue to receive counselling whether or not you are part of the research programme.

All of our counsellors are volunteers and donate their time to support survivors of domestic violence. We do not currently have access to any external funding. We currently offer the service free of charge, but we are aware that having donations would support the development of the Service and staff. We therefore ask anyone accessing counselling to consider making a small donation (for example £5) for each session, if they are able to do so.

We understand that it can be a difficult decision to access counselling and we want to provide you with the information that can help you to do so, through this website. Please take your time to work through the sections of most interest to you. We hope this is helpful and look forward to meeting you in person soon.