Family work.

Family work at Foothills isn't a separate modality. It's what happens when the therapy widens to include the people around the client — a partner, a parent, a sibling, sometimes a whole household.

Some of this happens in a counselling room. Some of it happens in the arena, with a horse standing between two people who haven't been able to talk to each other in months. What the setting offers — space, animals, ground under your feet — often makes it easier for families to be in the same room without falling into the same patterns.

The work draws on the same trauma-informed, somatically aware frameworks we use in individual care. Attachment, nervous system regulation, relational repair. What changes is the unit. Instead of tracking one person's system, the practitioner is tracking the space between people — the ways they co-regulate or fail to, the roles that have calcified, the things no one says because everyone already knows.

It depends on what's needed. Sometimes it's a few joint sessions folded into one person's ongoing individual work. Sometimes it's a dedicated block of family sessions with a clear focus — communication, a specific conflict, a transition. Sometimes it's two people and a horse, learning to lead together before they try to talk.

Sessions run 60 to 90 minutes. The format adapts. What stays consistent is the pacing — we don't force conversations the system isn't ready for, and we don't pretend that getting everyone in the same room is the same as doing the work.

Family work often runs alongside individual counselling, equine-assisted therapy, or both. A parent might be doing their own trauma work with one practitioner while attending family sessions with another. An adolescent might work with the horses individually and then bring a parent into the arena once the groundwork is there.

We coordinate across practitioners when multiple members of a family are in care here. Confidentiality boundaries are discussed clearly at the outset.