In our previous blog, we introduced you to our Remote Practice model, or how we can bridge distance, time, and financial gaps by driving to where families live outside of Edmonton.

In this blog, we’re here to share some of the amazing places our team have ventured across Alberta to serve individuals, families, schools and communities.

Therapy and healing can happen anywhere—and we can help make it a reality for you!

Schools

Schools across Alberta have welcomed our coaches for individual coaching, group learning, and professional development training. In these photos, Coach Jon and Coach Mike offer My Name is Trauma training, and Coach Paula is working with children in a classroom.

We work with students, parents, teachers, school board members, teaching assistants, and just about anyone who needs more support working with children with special needs, and/or trauma-informed approaches individually and in the overall classroom setting.

Our coaches have also joined multidisciplinary teams in school meetings to advocate for and help support a child’s learning with everyone involved.

When success is looking good at home, school is one of the other places we like to go to make sure the strategies we work on are consistently used by teachers and other adults who may work with youth regularly throughout the week.

Ice Rinks, Rec Centers, and Playgrounds

In the above examples, Coach Emily and Coach Trent help a client using an ice walker at skating rink in rural Alberta. Coach Mike takes kids on a trail ride at Goldbar Park here in Edmonton.

Therapy through play is not just an area of expertise at Qi, but something we’re immensely proud of. Opportunities for play are also opportunities for children to share their interests, strengths, and lives with us.

In these settings, children are often willing and able to set goals for themselves throughout therapy sessions, while the ‘clinical’ targets of physical motor development and executive functioning are explored and met through recreation and—put simply—just plain fun.

Family Farms and Acreages

Featured in these photos are Coaches Emily and Wendy visiting clients in their family properties out of town!

Families who live out of Edmonton on their own farms, cottages and acreages are all too familiar with the long car, truck, and school bus drives it takes to get children to the places they need.

Often, their only option is spending hours driving back and forth into big cities like Edmonton and Calgary to access healthcare specialists of all kinds.

Week after week, this can be a huge drain on families, and made more difficult if the therapy services in their nearby towns (eg. Bonnyville, Whitecourt, Lloydminster, Cold Lake) are at capacity and no longer taking new clients.

At family farms, we find all sorts of tools and opportunities to build strategies and meet client goals. This has included making obstacle courses, regulating through quality time with horses and other family pets, and even custom fitness regimens such as flipping old tractor tires.

Hiking and Biking Trails

In these photos, Coach Kelly found a lovely feather while on a hiking trail, and Coach Sam snapshots one of our Qi families on a bike ride together.

Long Alberta winters can make it easy to stay inside, but once the snow gives way to spring, the outdoors is free to roam, and ripe for opportunities.

Walking, biking, boating, taking the dogs out, or simply taking what you’re working on at home to your backyard, are ways that we utilize the outdoors for services. Sometimes to prep for other activities like choosing appropriate clothing for the weather, having the actual elements to work with outside helps drive these lessons forward.

Indigenous Reserves

As settlers to Canada in our office and our staff, we are honored and grateful for the opportunity to provide supports to homes, schools, and communities in Indigenous reserves across Alberta.

In our other blog for National Indigenous History Month, we explore how Indigenous families face especially complex challenges accessing therapy that is culturally competent and involves Indigenous approaches and lenses in service delivery.

At Qi Creative, we work with whatever protocols and competencies are needed by community leaders to keep working and cultural relationships safe, and children and their families held with dignity and love.

Two particular places we have served in the last two years include Onion Lake Cree Nation and Little Red River Cree Nation.

Remote From Home

Wherever you are, if you’re not comfortable in person, can’t make it due to bad traffic, bad weather or a bad cold, our coaches offer telepractice options for individuals and groups!

Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, whatever platform you use, we’ll make it work. In the above photo, Coach Emily adapted a corner of her house to serve as a Therapy Nook to make online visits engaging and fun!

Rethink Therapy

As workplaces and working environments have changed over the past few years, so has therapy. It is beyond time for families and professionals on both sides to see that therapy is more than rote lessons taught while seated in a clinic, or an assessment done in a cold hospital room.

Remote therapy in Alberta opens the opportunity for healthcare to thousands of families who may otherwise find themselves without support due to logistics, time and financial constraints that those who live in big cities may take for granted.

If you find the idea of having therapy at your home or anywhere in your community interesting, reach out! Fill out an Intake Form today by clicking the rainbow button on the side of this page.