Lori Gill knows her trauma-specific approach to counselling helps her clients make dramatic improvements in their mental health. The St. Catharines psychotherapist and founder of Attachment and Trauma Therapy Centre (ATTCH) Niagara also knows that many more people should benefit from the therapy that the non-profit agency can provide.
A $15,000 Community Grant from the Niagara Community Foundation may help her bridge that gap. ATTCH Niagara is using the funding to develop a tool to track client outcomes, with a plan to provide clear evidence that their specialized approach to counselling reduces suicidal ideation, self-harm, depression, anxiety, and PTSD.
Gill and her board of directors have seen first-hand the healing that clients of their non-profit centre have experienced, and the stories, testimonies, and anecdotal evidence add up. Gill and her staff are convinced they have a model that works, and referrals from the local agencies that work with some of Niagara’s most vulnerable citizens indicate the value of the care they can provide. But to access funding from the Ministry of Health, they need data. The Foundation’s grant is allowing ATTCH Niagara to develop a streamlined assessment model that will collect and analyze that data, and along the way help therapists deliver better care.
ATTCH Niagara’s model helps clients heal from intergenerational and childhood trauma, something the agency’s board chair and longtime community volunteer, Gail Richardson, says is key to helping them overcome the harm done to their brains, minds, and bodies – often in childhood – leaving them with lifelong obstacles to overcome.
“Many of the people we work with have experienced developmental or ongoing childhood trauma during their formative years and then it’s just compounded from there,” said Gill. Yet the treatment model works. “We have a lot of people coming in with high-risk behaviours and even in five or six sessions, they are starting to shift, and they can regulate in a better way, they are more stable.”
Gill says the long-term goal is to make those improvements – which can lead to more healthy families, and more opportunities for education or employment – available at low cost or no cost to more Niagara residents.
“Regardless of what age they are or what point in their life, we can treat that pain. They don’t have to stay stuck in the pain, they don’t have to stay stuck in the suffering – there can be relief. One client in her 80s broke down and said, ‘I had no idea I didn’t have to live this way my whole life.’
“It’s an honour, and I am so grateful for what we can do with the community’s support.”
Photo Credit: Aaron & Tara Photography
