Counselling support program for Indigenous families uses mixed-healing approach

Formerly known as Regina Palliative Care Inc., it’s a program that provides counselling services and support to people who have suffered significant death loss.

Elders at Regina’s Caring Hearts support program are using land-based healing, sharing circles and other traditional healing processes to help Indigenous people through bereavement and as an act of reconciliation.

Formerly known as Regina Palliative Care Inc., then Regina Greystone Bereavement Center, and now Caring Hearts, it’s a program that provides counselling services and support to people who have suffered significant death loss.

Caring Hearts also now works with those who have suffered trauma and supports those impacted by missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG).

“We provide both a western therapeutic approach and a traditional healing Indigenous approach to our counselling,” said Dwayne Yasinowski, Caring Hearts director of education.

“We have three contract clinicians that work with us and two elders that will provide traditional healing.”

This inclusion is necessary for reconciliation, according to Yasinowski.

With this knowledge, they are creating a toolkit for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous agencies.

“This toolkit is pulling together lots of knowledge from different regions and different territories and different elders,” said Yasinowski.