PHFC Goals, intent and purpose

Home is more than a place, it is a state of being. In which we are safe, accepted, connected, and have room to grow to our full potential. Pathways Home works to help people feel safe, comfortable, at peace in their own home, with the people in their lives, and in their own body. The journey home can take many directions. Together may we find our pathways home.

Pathways Home Family Counselling Is:

Solution Focused

A solution focused approach to therapy utilizes the potential and strength in people to develop clear strategies that help overcome life's challenges.

Collaborative

Every person is valuable and has contributions to the development and progress of healing. At Pathways we enjoy learning from each other and developing solutions that could not be found without each other. There are always more possibilities together.

Family Oriented

We are all shaped by our childhood experience and are reshaped by our partner-parenting experience. Most joys and pain revolve around our relationships with family. It is a fundamental part of our human experience. Interventions aim at understanding, repairing, and strengthening these relationships. Strengthening Families: strengtheningfamiliesillinois.org

Informed by Brain Develoment Research

Difficult life experiences early and even later in life can make it difficult to feel at home in community, family, or even inside our own bodies. Pathways Home continues to search out and integrate research into treatment. Therapeutic interventions are implemented to increase understanding of brain trauma and to guide recovery. The Alberta Family Wellness Initiative is a site that collects and provides research about trauma, recovery, and brain development that impacts both our physical and mental health.Alberta Family Wellness

Our Services

Family Counselling

Specializing in relationship repair, understanding child development, grief recovery, reducing challenging behavior through facilitating development.As families experience major life transitions and difficulties parent-child relationships often suffer. We work to help find solutions to concerns and repair difficult relationships through supportive systemic collaborative discussion.

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Couple Counselling

When the dream is fading and distance grows, it's time to rekindle meaningful communication and interaction. Finding home in your partner can be the fountain of healing and development. Lets work together to eliminate road blocks to intimacy so you can begin dreaming together again.

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Individual Counselling

For those seeking help with grief, depression, anxiety, addiction, and relationship recovery.

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Public Speaking, Staff Training, Parent Presentations

I have given presentations with topics such as: 'Sleep, Why We Need it and How to Get It' and 'Understanding Alarm and how it Hijacks our Best Intentions.' I also speak on how attachment affects brain development and resolution of intergenerational trauma. Please call or email for scheduling and discussion on how to meet your organizations specific needs.

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For Alberta Child, Youth, and Family Caseworkers

There is over 10 years experience working with youth in care as a family therapist working to repair relationships with bio family, foster, and adoptive families. Facilitating collaborative systemic relationships with caregivers in children's past, present, and future (when possible) has resulted in reduction of mental health concerns, smoother transitions into permanency, increased familial participation in case planning, and increased stability in placements. The PHFC approach is informed by and works collaboratively with the Signs of Safety approach as presented by Dr. Andrew Turnell.

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About Pathways Home Family Counselling

PHFC was developed out of over ten years of serving families in high risk and challenging circumstances. It was found through personal experience and growing research that when children are able to address life's difficulties in a community of connected caregivers and are able to stay connected to caregivers that are close to their hearts, they are more able to recover and adapt. Facilitating connection and repair with past and present caregivers (be it bio-family, adoptive family, or any other caring person) reduces attachment distress and releases adaptive energy that children need in order to continue healthy development.

Our logo

The PHFC logo was developed to blend the image of a dream catcher and also of a circle of people holding hands, woven together to form and interconnected community of support. I imagine the logo represents ideas like 'dreaming of families together' or 'finding home together.'


Who is PHFC for ?
  • Individuals seeking therapy to address grief, anxiety, depression, and relationship repair
  • Couples seeking therapy to rebuild their relationships, open communication, find balance in their lives
  • Families seeking help managing difficult behavior or relationships with their children, parents, step-family etc.
  • Caseworkers seeking consultation and therapy for at-risk children, parents, and family groups. PHFC works to revitalize and develop healthy relationships.



"Humankind has not woven the web of life, we are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect." - Chief Seattle, 1854

  • "A family is a risky venture, because the greater the love, the greater the loss... That's the trade-off. But I'll take it all."

    Brad Pitt.

We’d Love to Hear From You

Benjamin Ellingson | M.Sc. Registerd Psychologist

Serving Red Deer and Area

Specializing in family counselling, anxiety, depression,

grief, attachment, and relationship repair.

Phone: 403-304-9093

Email: ben@pathwayshomefamilycounselling.ca

Contact us