The best place for a family to heal is at home. With that in mind, Ranch Ehrlo’s Family Treatment Program (FTP) has expanded outside the city of Regina.

The unique, innovative, and nationally recognized program was created in 2006 to address the need for intensive in-home service provision to families in need of clinical treatment. The program expanded several times over the years to allow more families to have access, but the latest growth has expanded the program that works to keep families together to the communities of Moose Jaw and Fort Qu’Appelle.

Due to demand from across the country, Ranch Ehrlo will be growing to allow six additional families to access the program in the neighbouring communities.

“The family program has a lot of strengths and a lot of history but one of the missing pieces for program development is delivering services in families’ own communities. Through this expansion, if we can get services to meet families’ needs right in their own community, that really is the next step for the Family Treatment Program,” FTP director Patti Petrucka explained.

She added, “Often families are hesitant to come to the program in Regina because they want to get away from the temptations of the cities or they don’t want to be in an urban setting. Many northern families feel safer in smaller communities.”

The expansion will allow the program to build relationships and partner with community organizations.  Each community has vast services in place that are already assisting families, we simply hope to fill any identified gaps in the service continuum.

“I’m very excited about expanding in the Fort Qu’Appelle area as they have an incredible abundance of  First Nations cultural components embedded within the community. There are also amazing supports and community agencies in place that we are excited about the opportunity to partner with,” she continued.

Families in the expanded communities can still take advantage of the many group classes offered to parents in Regina as well as access support services locally.

The expansion will include three new homes in each community. Currently, the agency is recruiting new staff, including a therapist and two and a half treatment workers in each community.

The Family Treatment Program delivers research-based best practices to keep children safe, strengthen families, and reduce the need for placing children into out of home care and to provide services to minimize the time that children are placed away from their families.