When you need low cost care, you often have to forfeit your rights to choice and quality. At Whole Valley Therapy, we believe you are worthy of high-quality care that meets your needs—independent of your ability to pay.
You deserve therapy that is grounded in libteratory and intersectional feminist practices.
Therapy that takes into account who you are; understands the structural constraints in your life.
Therapy that will not pathologize, placate, or control you because you don’t have access to other resources.
We also recognize the lack of training opportunities for master’s level clinicians to practice their skills and be mentored in feminist therapy.
That’s why we offer lower cost therapy through our clinical intern services.
Our fees range from $5 to $100 per session. We ask folks who can afford an intern’s full fee of $100/session to do so. Folks who cannot afford this are asked to pay the fee they can afford. (The more individuals we have paying full fee, the more “pay what you can afford” slots we can offer.)
Our clinical interns are enrolled in a master’s level counseling or social work program, and are engaged in coursework, supervision, and other supports through their school in order to advance their counseling skills. Our clinical interns get access to everything our fully licensed clinicians receive (trainings, consult groups, resources) plus additional weekly feminist supervision and readings around the intersection of social justice and therapy. We select interns who we know are dedicated to social justice and are committed to serving our queer community.
Since the work interns do is part of their training program, please expect to have your therapy sessions recorded. Recordings follow strict confidentiality protocols and are used to support the clinical intern’s growth as a clinician, as well as to ensure adherence to ethical and quality standards. At this time our interns are best equipped to work with individuals who are adequately served by weekly therapy, and not in active crisis/needing a higher level of care.
If ever an intern’s training/experience is not adequate to meet your needs, Whole Valley Therapy will work with you to facilitate a referral to a more experienced clinician in the community (though we can’t guarantee it would be at a similarly low fee).
Our clinical interns stay for the full academic year up to 1.5 years. Whether they continue on with us as associate clinicians or whether they go elsewhere post-graduation, we will coordinate with you to determine what happens for you next at the end of their internship. We will support your continued work with the clinician (if possible/desired) or your transfer of care to a different clinician. You may also feel that you are ready to end therapy and may not wish to continue.
If you’re interested in low-cost care, or have questions, please reach out today and we’ll do our best to support you. No matter what you can afford, you are always worthy of care.
Even when we don’t have the openings to offer, please know that we will continue to advocate for a dismantling of the system within our communities, political structures, and professional societies.