WLAC’s Family Therapy Clinic

WLAC’s Family Therapy Clinic runs on a Thursday afternoon. The Clinic is offered to families who have faced multiple traumas across the generations and who are interested in working as a family to move forward. The Clinic gives them a safe space to explore and address the challenges they are facing.

What is family therapy?

Family therapy can help each family member to notice what they can do differently to break historic patterns. The family therapy team’s experience is that most parents are generally doing the best they can in the circumstances they find themselves and are very motivated to improve family dynamics. 

How does the Family Therapy Clinic work?

WLAC’s Family Therapy Clinic offers a dedicated fortnightly session for a client family. The whole family attends and can choose to invite members of their extended family or other key members of their support networks.

A WLAC therapist leads the session with the family group and in addition, two other WLAC therapists sit in and observe the session. The observers then discuss and reflect back to the group what they have heard and noticed. The observing therapists become part of a therapeutic team. They can help introduce strategic messages into the sessions and they can effect change in both the family system and the therapeutic system consisting of family and therapist. This can help the group focus on important issues, enhance continuity across sessions and promote therapeutic work between sessions.

The Family Therapy Clinic is an intensive intervention that WLAC can use to support large families with complex, long running and profound issues.

Thank you for supporting our work with vulnerable children and their families.