Eden Health Care Services’ Recovery of Hope counselling program continues to grow as it works to meet the mental health needs of southern Manitoba.
One of the welcoming counselling spaces at the Recovery of Hope offices, located in the ALG Professional Centre in downtown Winkler
The agency has recently expanded its counselling therapy team with the addition of Charlie Enns, who comes to the role as a Master of Psychotherapy and Spirituality candidate and with particular interests men’s mental health, addiction, and grief and loss support.
Enns’ hiring comes just a few months after the program welcomed counsellor Gaylene Dueck to the team, shared program director Kim Thiessen.
“We’re always looking to grow,” she said, noting they have nearly two dozen counsellors operating from Recovery of Hope’s offices in Winkler, Steinbach, and Winnipeg.
“Expanding our team isn’t just about adding appointments,” Thiessen said. “It’s about expanding fit and choice so people can find the right counsellor and the right approach for their needs.”
And while in-person counselling sessions are of course offered at all three of those sites, the program also provides its virtual services province-wide to ensure people have access to counselling even if they live in remote rural areas or have other challenges that make getting out to a session difficult. As long as you have stable internet service, you can sign up to connect with a counsellor.
“We’ve had counsellors do counselling with people that are living internationally, and certainly across Canada. But our focus obviously is in Manitoba,” Thiessen said. “All of our counselors offer virtual counseling as well as in-person.
It’s an option that is especially appealing to the younger generation, Thiessen observed, though people of all ages certainly got used to virtual meetings during the pandemic.
“We’ve had quite often folks calling us from smaller centres that just don’t have access to counselling services or the counselling services in their communities are really busy, so they reach out to us and we can set them up with counsellors in Winnipeg, Steinbach, wherever we have a counsellor that is available and taking on new clients.”
In the 2024-25 fiscal year, the program logged just over 6,000 counselling sessions.
“The need is not slowing down,” Thiessen said. “When I started in this role we were averaging about 4,400 to 5,000 a year, so in the last three years it’s really shot up.”
Recovery of Hope’s base fee is $125 per session, but they also offer a sliding fee scale based on annual household income to ensure financial hardship isn’t a barrier to receiving care. That scale system is subsidized by the donations that come from such community events as Eden’s annual Tractor Trek or Head for the Hills.
“We’re a non-profit, so we do a lot of fundraising just to be able to cover the difference between what our sliding fee scale is and what our actual costs are,” Thiessen said. “That’s kind of the yearly struggle, making sure that we’ve got enough money in that pot so that people can continue to access counselling when they need it.”
The addition of new counsellors means shorter wait times across the Recovery of Hope network (the average wait is two or three weeks) but it also provides access to a greater range of professionals with differing specialities.
“All of them are Masters-trained counsellors—that’s kind of the bare minimum that we require—but they all come with various different training,” Thiessen said, noting some focus on working with children, others on couples counselling, and still others on topics like abuse, trauma, or addictions. “Everybody offers something just a little bit unique.”
Thiessen noted their counsellors approach their work from a patient-led perspective. While Eden is a faith-based organization, all its counsellors are accredited and follow standard practices for care.
“There is no discrimination in terms of whether someone is religious or not religious or what background they come from,” she stressed. “If a client does come in and want that kind of spiritual support, faith-based support, our counsellors can provide that and are happy to do so. But really, it’s client-driven and whatever the client is most comfortable with is the direction that the counsellors will go.”
Thiessen hopes people won’t let the stigma that often surrounds mental health challenges stop them from reaching out for help.
“There isn’t one person in this world that isn’t impacted by mental health,” she said. “We all are on our own journey somewhere. And some of us are struggling at different times than others. We all need support sometimes.”
Greater comfort, privacy
On a tour of the Winkler location earlier this month, Eden CEO Brad Unger shared some of the upgrades the site has made of late.
“We’ve renovated quite extensively in the last year or so, because we didn’t even have a dedicated door,” he shared of the space, which is located in the ALG Professional Centre on Main St. “We really tried to take some steps for greater confidentiality and making it a better space, because it was less ideal than before.”
The Winkler office now features a waiting room with frosted glass so people passing by can’t see who’s inside, as well several private counselling rooms with comfy couches and chairs.
The Recovery of Hope program is a big part of the work of Eden, which also runs the regional psychiatric hospital along with supportive housing and employment programs.
“Recovery of Hope offers a really essential and critical service in the mental health system,” Unger said. “Counselling therapy is really a backbone service.”
It’s one that allows the agency to reach the greatest number of people needing care.
“At a time when mental health services are sometimes hard to access, we’re proud that we have a service that is so accessible,” Unger said. “We work really hard to make it affordable and to have our wait lists at manageable levels so that we can be there and meet people with the service where they’re at, when they need it.”
You can learn more about Recovery of Hope’s services online at edenhealthcare.ca/roh or call 1-866-493-6202.
