As of January 1st, 2022 we will be changing our fees for incoming clients. We deeply appreciate and value the relationships we have with our clients (you!), so we are offering a grace period until April 1st 2022 to our current clients.
Hello Peak Community!
As of January 1st, 2022 we will be changing our fees for incoming clients. We deeply appreciate and value the relationships we have with our clients (you!), so we are offering a grace period until April 1st 2022 to our current clients.
There are so many forms of mental health support now at different price points, but not a lot of info on where that money goes. Explaining where your financial resources are going in therapy is another way we aim to provide trauma informed mental health support- the more you know, the more control you have to make decisions that align with your values. So here’s a breakdown of your session fee:
If you’re curious to know more about where your money is going you can have a look at the "Where Your Money Goes" Document showing a more detailed breakdown.
The biggest portion of your session fee goes directly to our team of counsellors and supervisors. This reflects the two most important parts of therapy:
The work and relationship between you and your counsellor
A team approach to mental health care with structured supervision and support
Counsellors are in full control of their schedules at Peak, and only see clients they have energy, time and capacity for. We find this (often) results in counsellors seeing a few less clients per week than (some) other agencies. This autonomy in scheduling allows for less burnout, better care and longer careers. Another way we support employee counsellor sustainability is investing in vacation pay, EI, and CPP.
Free + Low Cost Services at Peak Resilience
Approximately 10% of our regular rates supplement lower cost services (“sliding scale” fee structure) and free services at Peak Resilience. Part of doing therapy work sustainably is making therapy affordable for all. Past free and low cost service initiatives have included (but aren’t limited to) our free or by donation COVID support groups, Black Women’s Support Group, Muslim Women’s Support Group and Motherhood Group. Stay tuned for more groups in 2022!
Research and Development
We pay our (super smart) team to do extra research and development to support the continued offerings of free education and events to our community. Blog posts, articles, presentations, free groups or courses, training for other healthcare professionals are all examples of paid work @ Peak.
In person + Virtual Counselling
Peak is one of the few counselling practices that kept office space throughout this pandemic while going virtual. Despite the increased costs (and initial panic) of running our services online and in-person, we are huge fans of this hybrid model and we think our clients are too! This model allows for more choice (attend virtually or in our downtown office), and clients often use a mix of both. We want to keep this in-person + virtual model moving forward, because we think it works best for everyone.
Other Operating Costs
This is where we can get into the weeds and won’t bore you too much with insurance, taxes, and other miscellaneous operating costs. There are also additional costs going towards your counsellor for government legislated sick pay, and extended health benefits, which ultimately results in greater life balance, autonomy, and security for the counsellor. All of these things benefit ethical and effective support for clients- our main priority. We do our very best to keep our costs low.
We also recognize that finances can be a barrier to counselling and have created a Low Cost Counselling Options Document below.Low Cost Counselling Options.pdf137.75 KB
We don’t want money to get in the way of quality care. If you have questions or concerns about our fees or practice in general we encourage you to share that with us. You can have a chat with your counsellor, chat with admin support at connect@peak-resilience.com or call us at (604) 682-PEAK (7325), or you can fill out this anonymous survey that will inform our leadership.
The most common way people find us is through word of mouth, and we take the care of your friends and family seriously. We are honoured and grateful to work with you and hope to keep raising the bar for high quality, anti-oppressive, trauma informed counselling services for years to come.
