Knox United Church has launched a Counselling and Healing Collective in response to an overwhelming need in the community, according to Pastor Jennifer Ferguson.
The collective includes three counsellors and two healing practitioners — one is an energy healer and the other works with both energy healing and emotional healing, Ferguson said.
“Last year we got a grant from the United Way and the Government of Canada. They asked us, 'what did you learn from COVID?' and we said we learned that people are isolated and lonely," she said.
With the grant funding, the church hired a therapist for one-on-one counselling and community building. The response was "overwhelming", Ferguson said, and the church wanted to continue the service.
Interested people can visit the collective's website and select a counsellor or healing practitioner. Counselling is done both online and in person.
The counselling is being done as a fee for service, but if people are struggling financially, the sessions can be partially or fully subsidized, based on a decision by the counsellor, Ferguson added.
Currently the subsidies are funded solely by donations from the church's congregation. Ferguson hopes to secure more grant funding.
The grant applied for funds counselling services for survivors of gender-based violence, including survivors of sex trafficking, sexual or physical abuse and intimate partner violence.
When Ferguson was applying for the grant she realized she knew of 12 stories of people experiencing abuse in the past year.
“That’s why we decided we need the Counselling and Healing Collective because this is beyond what we can do, giving out food cards and sitting and listening,” she said. “These folks are needing much more support than we can give them, so that’s why we hired the therapist in the first place."