Kelly Ettagiak came a long way to heal her family. Kelly and her three children made the journey from the Northwest Territories to Regina in hopes that the Family Treatment Program (FTP) would be able to help them. “I really had no idea of what to expect at the beginning, but social services said I had to do something, or they would take my kids,” she explained…
We write a lot about Ranch Ehrlo and cover topics from clients, staff, guiding principles, activities, etc. But we dug deep to find these nine little-known (hopefully surprising) facts about the agency. 1. We employee over 800 people. When the Ranch started over 50 years ago it employed 12 people. Since then the agency has expanded across the province and includes professional disciplines from…
All Ranch Ehrlo employees – from direct care workers to administration and everywhere in between – have or will take CARE training. CARE, Children And Residential Experiences: Creating Conditions for Change, was developed by Cornell University to improve services for people in care. Though we all understand the importance of the CARE principles, for those of us who are not direct care…
I may have mentioned on this blog before that my background is journalism. So even before coming to Ranch Ehrlo, I’d interviewed my fair share of folks, on a wide variety of topics – from human interest (which is always my favourite and lends itself so well to working here!) to court reporting to sports (my least favourite by far), I really have done a little bit of everything. But in all…
Ehrlo Counselling’s Shelley Tamaki has spent six years providing outreach services to the community of Pheasant Rump Nakota First Nation, located approximately two hours southeast of Regina. “Outreach counselling is important because there are situations where people simply are unable to come into our offices,” she explained. “There are so many obstacles that can prevent someone from…
Recently I watched a TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian author. In it, she spoke of the danger of telling a single story about a person, place, or people. (You can watch it all here if you’re interested.) What Chimamanda talked about is how, if we allow ourselves to only learn one thing about someone or something, that becomes our singular narrative about that person, place, or…
What happens when you don’t feel safe to express who you truly are? Many of us are fortunate and will never know. But Casey*, one of Ranch Ehrlo’s longstanding clients in our Programs for Persons with Developmental Disabilities, has recently helped us to understand just a little bit of what goes on when you finally feel safe enough to be who you are. Having an ecologically orientated…
Ranch Ehrlo administrative float Maureen Jory feels a deep connection to Ranch Ehrlo Society’s new mandate, and she sat down with us to talk about it. For the past year, we have been training staff across our agency in CARE – Children And Residential Experience, created by Cornell University. One of the goals of CARE is to bring all employees of our vast agency together, to ensure that no…
Mitchell House unit manager Josh Miller is a familiar face around our Regina and Corman Park campuses, but soon he’ll be getting recognized even more. Josh: Source MasterChef Canada/CTV Josh will be appearing on the upcoming season of MasterChef Canada, a reality television show that pits amateur and home chefs against one another to earn a grand prize of $100,000 and the title of…
Our employees are the heartbeat of our agency. In an organization as large as ours, our employees are as diverse as the positions they occupy. We recently reached out to some of our direct care workers – those who work directly with our clients – to learn more about them. We wanted to get a sense of what their day-to-day work lives are like, but also ask a few more personal questions to get…
Even when our youth are no longer living at Ranch Ehrlo, they know they always have a place to return to. No story illustrates the bond between youth and staff better than that of Becki*, who spent five and a half years at Ranch Ehrlo Society in Prince Albert; beginning at Alex Guy House and transitioning to Matheson House where she lived until last month. “Becki is still very much a part…
We are a year into training staff across the agency in CARE- Children And Residential Experience, developed by Cornell University. One of the goals of CARE is to develop congruency across our vast agency, so that everyone from direct care workers, to accountants, to senior leadership, is applying the same principles to their work in our organization and working together for a common goal of…
For the past seven years, Ranch Ehrlo has been part of the International Volunteer Exchange Program, administered by the Mennonite Central Committee. They connect us with volunteers from around the world, who stay with host families and work at Ranch Ehrlo as educational assistants for a year. They receive all the same training as a regular employee of Ranch Ehrlo would receive. Our latest blog…
Not many people can predict the future - even if you are the CEO. This week’s blog, guest written by Ranch Ehrlo CEO herself, Andrea Brittin, looks at what she envisions for the agency over the next five years. Looking into the future, I don’t see our organization changing a lot in terms of the types of services that we offer. There will always be a need for residential treatment for some…
From January 31 to February 4th five residents and two staff from Ranch Ehrlo’s Programs for People with Developmental Disabilities (PDD) visited the Yukon to participate in an invitational Special Olympic soccer tournament, where they took home both the gold medal and memories of a lifetime. Unit manager Shaun Silzer and personal support leader Cam Huberdeau travelled with the residents for…
