Claire Sims, BACP

Claire Sims is a UK-based counsellor with two decades of professional experience supporting people through stress, anxiety, relationship difficulties, trauma and abuse, sexual and domestic violence, and grief. Trained initially in psychodynamic counselling, she now describes her practice as integrative, drawing on a range of skills to tailor work to each person's needs and pace. She works in a trauma-informed way and emphasizes a client-led, collaborative approach that helps people regain a sense of control while moving through difficult or painful life experiences.

Claire began her counselling training in 2000 and started seeing clients in 2005. Over the years she has worked across a variety of roles and settings, including front-line counselling, helplines, service coordination, and training. Her experience includes substantial work with Suffolk Rape Crisis, where she provided counselling for all forms of sexual violence and later coordinated services and set up outreach and video counselling. She has supported bereavement work at St Elizabeth Hospice, facilitated groups for postnatal depression and for mood and anger issues, and worked within IAPT services and community counselling organisations such as First Stop, Halstead Mind, and Progress Counselling Essex.

She has also developed services for dementia counselling, helplines to reduce loneliness among older people, and trained others to deliver counselling by phone and online. Claire holds BACP accreditation - the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy - which is a recognised professional body for counsellors and psychotherapists in the UK.