Couples Therapist; MSW​/RSW or RP

Young Sprouts Therapy is a child, teen, and family practice in Thornhill serving Vaughan and York Region. Couples counselling sits alongside our family therapy and parent work, and it is a service we currently turn away more of than we can take on.

What makes this caseload distinctive is who walks through the door. A good share of the couples we see are already connected to the practice: a child in therapy, a parent in coaching, a family in the middle of an assessment. The strain shows up as co-parenting conflict, an unequal division of labour, or the particular exhaustion of raising a child with additional needs.

That said, plenty of the couples we see are not parents at all, and this is not a co-parenting counselling role in disguise.

The caseload is yours to shape. If you want to work exclusively with couples, we can build toward that. If you would rather hold a mix of couples, family, and individual work, that is available too.

• Provide couples counselling to partners at every stage: premarital, newly cohabiting, long-married, blended, and separating.
• Work with the presenting issues couples actually arrive with: communication breakdown, recurring conflict, trust and affair recovery, intimacy and desire differences, parenting disagreements, financial stress, and cultural or interfaith differences.
• Screen for intimate partner violence and coercive control, and recognise when conjoint work is contraindicated and what to offer instead.
• Set and hold clear policies on individual sessions and confidentiality within couples work, so nobody is surprised by how information is handled.
• Offer discernment counselling to couples who are genuinely unsure whether to stay together.
• Collaborate with our child, family, and assessment clinicians where the same family is seen across more than one service.
• Complete intakes, treatment plans, and progress notes in Jane within our documentation timelines.
• Hold a consistent weekly schedule with real evening availability, because that is when most couples can attend together.

• Registered and in good standing with the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers as a Registered Social Worker with an MSW, or with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario as a Registered Psychotherapist.
• Demonstrated experience working with couples, not individual therapy only.
• Training in at least one recognised couples model, such as the Gottman Method, Emotionally Focused Therapy, PACT, or Imago.
• Competent at screening for intimate partner violence and at managing a session that turns high-conflict.
• Comfortable raising and discussing sex, intimacy, and desire without deflecting.
• Current professional liability insurance and a clear Vulnerable Sector Check.
• Able to work in person at our Thornhill office. Virtual couples sessions are available across Ontario.
• Familiar with PHIPA obligations and comfortable working in an EMR. We use Jane.

• Gottman Method training at Level 2 or 3, or certification as a Certified Gottman Therapist.
• EFT externship, core skills, or ICEEFT certification.
• Discernment counselling training for couples on the brink of separating.
• Sex therapy training, or genuine comfort working with sexual concerns.
• Perinatal or transition-to-parenthood training.
• Experience with neurodiverse couples, including partners with ADHD or autism.
• Experience with cultural, interfaith, and newcomer families navigating differing expectations of marriage.
• 2
  
  SLGBTQ+ affirming practice, including experience with non-monogamous and non-traditional relationship structures.
• Fluency in a language other than English. Russian, Hebrew, Mandarin, Cantonese, Farsi, Italian, and Punjabi all come up among the families we…