Children, youth and parents can access one-on-one counseling services with Registered Clinical Counsellors. As with all Blind Beginnings programs and services, counseling support includes helping the individual overcome barriers to reaching their full potential.
For Parents
When a parent learns that their child has little or no vision, they can experience a range of challenging emotions such as; fear, hopelessness, sadness, depression, anger, shame, guilt, grief, and loss. Being able to process these complicated feelings with a registered counselor who understands blindness will increase the speed and likelihood that the parent will come to a place of acceptance around their child’s vision. When this happens, some of these positive outcomes can result:
Children and youth who are blind will accept their disability more easily when they know that their parents have accepted it
Parents are better equipped to support their child when their child begins to understand their vision related differences
Parents hopes and expectations for their child’s future are raised and expanded
Parents are able to think more creatively about possible solutions to vision related problems when they arise
For Children and Teens
For children and teens who are blind or partially sighted, they too benefit from support from a counselor who understands what it’s like to have a visual impairment. Some common vision related challenges children and youth are working through are:
Feeling isolated and alone and not having many friends
Feeling left out of sports and extra-curricular activities due to inaccessibility
Low self-esteem and insecurities about what they look like in relation to their sighted peers
Feeling that expectations are lowered for them
Embarrassment or shame about having to use adapted equipment or a white cane
Feeling incompetent in comparison to their sighted peers who are able to be more independent
Worries about their future including employment, marriage, etc.
Our Counsellors
Shawn Marsolais MEd, RCC
Shawn Marsolais is a Registered Clinical Counsellor who has been working with children & youth who are blind or partially sighted for over twenty years. She completed her Masters of Education in Vocational Rehabilitation Counselling in 2012, and has been offering individual counselling and facilitating Parent and youth Support Groups through Blind Beginnings since then. Shawn was born with a degenerative eye-condition that caused her vision to deteriorate throughout her childhood. She understands firsthand the challenges youth and families face when coming to terms with a permanent diagnosis. Shawn also works part-time doing individual counselling in private practice through Denis Boyd & Associates in Coquitlam.
Sean Heaslip MA, RCC
Sean Heaslip a Registered Clinical Counsellor holding a Master's degree in Counselling psychology, and a current PhD candidate in Counselling Psychology at UBC completing his pre-doctoral internship year. Much of his clinical experience has been trauma focused, providing individual/group counselling to survivors of sexual abuse as well as clients experiencing issues with depression, anxiety, gender identity, grief and loss, disability, emotional regulation, identity, relationship, communication and family.
Sean has completed levels 1 & 2 of Emotion Focused Therapy training, and a DBT skills course. He focuses on emotions, experiential interventions and regulation techniques to help clients transform painful emotions, feel more in control and achieve their goals. He also have training in Indigenous, diversity and multicultural issues, and remote counselling.
Sean is partially blind, and am attuned to how power dynamics and differences influence the issues we face. Being a white male, and having a disability, he have experienced both privilege and marginalization. He brings his lived experience of disability and difference into his clinical approach, and he deeply empathizes with the struggle to feel that we are "enough".
For those interested in more information on taking advantage of our Counseling services, please contact Shawn Marsolais at shawn@blindbeginnings.ca.