Trudy Bosch

Say the words ‘Ranch Ehrlo’ and you probably think of at-risk teens and residential group homes. But we are more than that. Much more.

We are a family focused agency and our goal is to keep families together whenever possible. We have three, family focused programs that prevent the placement of children out of their home, assist families to reunite after having a child in care, or provide family-based care for children.

Family Treatment Program
The purpose of this program is to improve family safety and family functioning so families can reunite.  Intensive in home services are provided that assist the family in obtaining the knowledge, skills, and abilities to successfully reunify children to their care.  This program is integrated with our Clinical Assessment team and Ehrlo Counselling Services programs to provide the specialized clinical supports that are needed to work with our families who have complex needs.

Last year we served 41 families and 65% of families were reunified.  We had a long waiting list until the expansion of three homes which became fully operational this fall.  We now are able to serve 15 families at one time.  The average duration of service for our families is over 120 days. The program also has a growing segment of fathers taking part which has also lead to the creation of 24:7 Dad -  a free community program run by dads for dads to provide support. The group is co-facilitated by former client and single father Monti.

Intensive Family Preservation Service
The program began in 2009 and is designed to prevent children from being removed from parental care and placed outside of the family home. In order to do this, an intensive treatment service is provided for up to six weeks.

Treatment Foster Care program
This pilot project with the Ministry of Social Services enables up to 10 children to receive specialized support and treatment with a treatment foster care parent who is paid a competitive professional wage to be a professional parent.  All of our agency's clinical services are utilized to provide the necessary supports and specialized services for the children in this program.

The expected outcome is for children to reunify with their families.  To accomplish this, we also work with the families.  This past year, twelve children were served and 100% of the children in the program were reunified.