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Family at home

PARENT and CAREGIVER SUPPORT

Parenting Support is sometimes needed when a child’s behaviors or emotions go above and beyond what average parenting skills can manage.


Emotion-Focused Family Therapy is a treatment model that is behaviourally based and emotionally focused. It is designed to support caregivers to support their loved ones with the interruption of symptoms, and the increase of health-focused behaviors, process emotions powering problematic behaviors and symptoms and mend relational wounds.  It also works to assist caregivers who have previously or currently struggled to support their loved one. EFFT can be used across the lifespan. 


One of the key strengths of the EFFT approach is that clinicians can guide caregivers to provide home-based support, even when their loved one refuses or is unable to access service. The tools and techniques of EFFT can also be integrated within other treatment modalities, and at various levels of care, to empower both families and treating clinicians.

It was founded on the pillars of:

  • Caregiver Empowerment and Involvement: parents are viewed as active agents of healing. Using evidence based skills in daily interactions with their loved one.

  • Emotional Processing: changing the ways loved ones and their caregivers attend to and process emotions can reduce the maladaptive behaviors. 

  • Skill Development: learning advanced caregiving skills that go above and beyond typical parenting. 

  • No Blame: releasing caregivers and their loved ones from self-blame from their current circumstances. 

  • Collaboration And Transparency: caregivers are the experts on their loved ones and the most available to assist in change and a therapist in an expert in mental health. Together, they can build a strong relationship to assist their loved one. 

  • The One Degree Effect: even a small change can make a big difference. 

“The best therapist on their best day will never be as effective as the parent who is willing to make even a 1% shift.”​​

Co-founder of Emotion Focused Family Therapy - Adele LaFrance

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