UPDATE- your EFAP has changed effective December 1, 2022.
The team at VK Wellness is grateful and delighted to announce that we will be continuing to support City of Powell River employees and their family members.
The revised wellness supports and EFAP are as follows:
VK Wellness provides one personal wellness planning session (1 hour) plus one follow-up session (1 hour) to help you explore your needs and plan out a personal wellness strategy.
Employee and Family Assistance Program (EFAP)
Employees and family members can make use of the Registered Clinical Counsellors or a Social Worker at VK Wellness for short term counselling. Longer term counselling needs can be coordinated between VK Wellness and our benefit provider Canada Life through your benefit plan.
Welcome to the City of Powell River Employee Wellness Program
To view department-specific programs and services available to you, kindly click on the department where you work. Services for all departments are below.
Current Programs
EFAP is available for you as a City of Powell River employee and to your immediate family members. The VK Wellness Initiative team has an individualized approach to achieving personal and collective wellness. We provide professional, confidential, and proactive services and programs to support you with a wide range of personal, family, and work-related concerns. We at VK support wellness as a holistic experience and have services that strengthen the body, mind, and spirit. This can include support for stress and anxiety, depression, life balance (childcare/parenting; new parents; elder and family care); mediation; relationships; grief and loss; addiction etc.), Pain, Health and Fitness, behavioural therapy, Wellness Planning and Career Planning.
We all deserve to be well
To access the program, BOOK HERE
Safe and Confidential Services
Our confidential services can support you to better your overall health and wellness. For online appointments, Telehealth is a safe and secure way of connecting with your practitioner online. Just like in-person care, your telehealth appointments, messages, and information are protected by privacy rules. Everyone is guaranteed confidentiality within the limits of the law. You will not be identified to anyone – including your employer.
What additional Services are available to me?
You can access a variety of services and supports for you and your family’s wellness needs, above and beyond the provided EFAP. We will match you with a professional who suits your unique needs. Some of these services can be accessed using your extended medical benefits, if that is an option for you. Other services can be paid out of pocket or with other funding sources like FNHA, ICBC, autism, PIE, etc. Our services can be offered face-to-face in a local office, over the phone, or through a secure online video platform. Programs and services are available for all ages, infants to elders.
- Counselling
- Dispute Resolution & Family Mediation
- Wellness Planning
- Occupation Therapy (OT) for Mental Health
- Clinical Herbal Therapy
- Registered Massage Therapy
- Sleep Therapy
- Holistic Nutrition
- Individual Fitness Training
- Yoga Therapy
- Kinesiology
- Family, Parent, and Caregiver programs
- Mindfulness-Based Clinical Interventions
- Circle of Security Parenting Program
Service Descriptions:
Counselling
People often use EFAP when day-to-day life becomes overwhelming. We offer counselling and therapy for any age including children as young as 3 years old. Counselling could be helpful for relationship concerns, family or parenting issues, anxiety, depression, addictions, grief, coping with health issues, or work-related challenges. Counselling might be a good choice if you are having trouble with emotions like anger, hopelessness, anxiety, or grief. Through EFAP you have access to general counselling, clinical counselling, family therapy, couples therapy, hypnotherapy, CBT, DBT, Trauma Therapy, Solution-Focused Therapy, Emotional-Focused Therapy, and more.
Dispute Resolution & Mediation
If you have been experiencing conflict that is impacting your relationships, working with a registered mediator could be helpful. Mediation offers not only the chance to reconcile differences and move forward, it also enhances the relationship by addressing underlying communication difficulties and long standing conflict. Family mediation might be considered if you are currently experiencing a separation or divorce and would like to use a mediator instead of a lawyer to facilitate this process.
Wellness Planning
You may need support in planning for changes you would like to make in your life. Our Wellness Planning programs help you discover how you will reach your wellness goals. This could mean helping you reach that one personal health goal you have struggled to overcome for a long time or support you in a wellness assessment process to better understand what your needs may be. Our Wellness Planning program is a 5-session program designed to help you map out the changes you want to make in your life. Our wellness planning program is offered for individuals, youth, and families. We also offer this program if you are in a leadership role (Wellness in Leadership) with your employer and focus on the specific challenges and leadership development skills you may want to focus on.
Occupational Therapy for Mental Health (OT)
OT focuses on increasing your functioning within your environment. That may be at home, work, or in the community. The OT will initially assess your functioning as it relates to your stress and mental health. They will then provide you with a treatment plan to make the changes you need to get back to functioning so you can move forward. The OT can also support you with the overall impact of stress and tension and provide you with exercises and practices to reduce overall stress.
Clinical Herbal Therapy
Our Clinical Herbal Therapist offers a variety of supports to help you cope with and move through the day-to-day. She can prescribe and create natural remedies to help with stress, sleep, dysregulation, appetite and more. She also provides coaching for behavioural and nutritional recommendation to help you along the way. This is a great choice if you are looking for a natural medicinal treatment for the physical and mental health issues you may be having in response to these changes.
Registered Massage Therapy
RMT’s will evaluate your health needs; provide an assessment of your specific soft tissue or musculoskeletal condition; predict the likelihood and/or timeline of your recovery; provide active (intense) or passive (gentle) hands on therapy; and through research, provide evidence-based patient education and remedial exercises. If your family members are experiencing tension and stress, injury or pain in the body, they may benefit from massage. Massage Therapy can support both physical and mental wellness and be a preventative tool for workplace injuries, stress and burnout. Our RMT’s specialize in pregnancy, post-partum, and massage for youth and children.
Sleep Therapy
Sleep can be impacted for many people by stress, burnout, change, grief and loss and other impacts of daily life. If you are experiencing poor sleep, night waking, or insomnia, our sleep counsellor can support you in addressing this. She uses behavioural sleep management strategies, nutritional support, and herbal medicine to get your sleep back on track..
Yoga Therapy
Yoga offers another way to work with the body and mind to deal with stress. Our experienced Yoga Instructors can support you by using yoga poses, breathing, and other practices that will be helpful for you in achieving your physical and mental health goals that will then support function in your day-to-day life at work and at home.
Holistic Nutrition
Holistic nutrition can support you with addressing gastrointestinal discomfort or weight difficulty that you may be experiencing because of stress and change. It can also be helpful if you are wanting to ensure your diet is filled with the right nutrients to support stress resiliency throughout this transition. Our holistic nutritionist can provide you with meal plans specific to your needs. She can also help you create meal plans for your family.
Individual Fitness Training for Stress and Wellness
Moving the body and exercising is a well-known behaviour to support stress resiliency. You can connect with one of our personal trainers for a 4-session program to help you develop an individualized physical fitness program for stress management.
Yoga Therapy
Yoga offers another way to work with the body and mind to deal with stress. Our experienced Yoga Instructors are offering a 4-session program to support your stress management using yoga poses, breathing, and other practices that will be helpful for you during your transition.
Kinesiology Services
Kinesiologists are health professionals who particularly specialize in the study and understanding of the biomechanics of human movement. VK’s kinesiologists will use assessments to inform the creation of individualized exercise prescriptions that will support and guide a wide variety of clients in the pursuit of their health and fitness goals. Those clients may include those aiming to: rehabilitate an injury, reduce/manage chronic pain, improve performance in sport and life, promote longevity, prevent injury, manage or reduce the risk of chronic health conditions, and optimize overall physical and mental health. Whatever your goal, a VK kinesiologist can help you get there.
Family, Parent, and Caregiver programs
Our family-based supports include some of the above programs we have mentioned. We offer family therapy and family mediation services to help you work through family-based difficulties and conflicts. We also offer Family Wellness Planning which uses our wellness planning model to support wellness related changes to your family system. We also offer specific support for youth and children depending on their needs. Some programs we don’t mention above include:
- Group support for anxiety for children and youth
- Mental Health and Behavioural Wellness integrated support for children and youth with mental health and behavioural wellness concerns, as well as developmental differences.
- Parenting groups
- Families in Transition program – Supports the whole family with transitions such as separation/divorce, blending families, moving to a new community, parents with new health challenges, death in the family
- Circle of Security – 1:1 8 week attachment-based parenting program
Mindfulness-based Interventions (MBI)
Mindfulness meditation is another strategy used to deal with difficulty or to increase your overall wellness. We are offering the opportunity to work with one of our Mindfulness-Based Intervention (MBI) clinical specialists to create an individualized program for you. This includes an assessment to see which practices might best meet your needs, an in-person session to introduce the practices, and a recording of the practices being guided. You will also be offered 4 weeks of follow-up sessions after starting your program to assess its effectiveness for you.
We also off Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy which is a clinical 8-week group program used in the treatment of depression, anxiety, chronic stress, and chronic illness.
