Support for the local community

Don Smart and Shen Elderton founded the Trust in 1992, when they realised the need for a need for low-cost or free therapy within the local community. After starting in Wallingford with an informal group, they soon realised the potential for a cooperative of psychotherapists, counsellors, natural health therapists and trainers.

They strongly believed in a holistic approach – promoting a healthy mind and spirit – and in providing these services to complement conventional medicine.

Although Don and Shen are now involved in community work in New Zealand, the cooperative that they established here in Reading continues to serve and support the Berkshire community with a wide range of free and low-cost Counselling, Psychotherapy and Complementary Therapy Services.

Life Story Therapeutic Centre
17 Eldon Square,
Reading Berkshire RG1 4DP

The house was built about 1840. This photograph was taken in 1897, when it became accommodation for doctors and surgeons working  across the street at the Royal Berkshire Hospital. It remained residential until 1974 when it became the offices of KRA consulting engineers (formerly Kenneth Rowe Associates). In 1994 the practice relocated to Wokingham and the property was purchased for the Trust.

Life Story - How it came about

1995 was the year I came back to New Zealand for my nephew’s 21st birthday. Shen and I had finished our training – he at Metanoia, Ealing in Gestalt and I at Wendover in Adlerian Counselling – both approaches being post-Freudian with a humanist grounding based on clinical practice, and socially embedded. Recent government legislation encouraged charitable trusts to be set up to supplement what was being provided by the Government. Metanoia and Wendover teaching institutes had set up charities which were evolving and Shen, who by this time had set up a private practice in Wallingford – first from home and then from my mothers old house, was finding that his working alone was too isolating. I was by this time teaching on the Wendover course. Together and with the Wendover group we had set up ‘Adlerian Summer Schools’ – still running and in its 14th year. 

Shen started gathering a group in Wallingford working towards charitable status and called  it ‘LIFE STORY’ – people telling the stories of their lives. Meanwhile I was selling my wholesale textile business in London. Our accountants strongly suggested that my pension fund should be used to purchase a property – bingo – Life Story had a home.17 Eldon Square, Reading was the second or third (I don’t remember which) property we viewed and we moved in within a few months. The houses round the square were built in the reign of William IV to provide residences for the doctors and surgeons at the Royal Berkshire Hospital across the road. Holistically it seemed appropriate use of the old Bath stone-fronted property

Shen’s interests and skills were in dealing with sexual abuse but not primarily. I was hoping to get some Adlerian teaching going – we were both trained in group work. Shen set out a training programme to include bereavement and loss and suicide. The upstairs rooms were let out so that other alternative approaches could be accommodated within the building: Chinese medicine, psychotherapy, acupuncture, osteopathy, homeopathy, massage: healing for mind, body and spirit. I was grappling with the formalities of the Charity and we came up with a group of working therapists who became ‘Associates’.

This worked well up to the time of our departure for New Zealand, when the group decided to disband leaving Sam, Nalini, Shen and I, having to work out a strategy in order to continue. At the beginning there was a lively and dedicated group of people who cooperated to get us off the ground, and they did. Some of those are still connected in one way or another. It was an exciting time and all did not, necessarily, go smoothly. We made mistakes and learnt. We erected the garden room to allow wheelchair access and for family work and moved the office to the ground floor where it is now. Shen also started the shamanic training and ran a Supervision training course based on the Sherwood (Nottingham) Institute’s model to Diploma level. The Charity undertook to provide free counselling and established a programme run by the Associates.

Now that we have settled down in New Zealand and are involved in community work, we are looking at the future. We send those at Life Story today our very warmest wishes and look forward to maintaining contact.

Don Smart 2006 

Waiheke Island

New Zealand