Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
Low-fee therapists at the Council for Relationships have helped Christina Gesualdi navigate life\u2019s curveballs for the last five years. <\/p>\n
The Kensington<\/a> resident started with individual therapy, paying $15 per session to cope with financial stress and isolation during the COVID shutdowns. After moving in with her partner, she continued on with couples therapy for $45.<\/p>\n Now, she\u2019s losing that lifeline. <\/p>\n Last week, Gesualdi and her partner learned from their therapist during their regular session that the Council for Relationships (CFR)<\/a> \u2014 a mental health safety net for Philadelphians and one of the nation\u2019s oldest relationship counseling centers \u2014 will close on May 29.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were like, `Wait, what? Really?\u2019\u201d Gesualdi said. \u201cIt\u2019s deeply upsetting.\u201d<\/p>\n The 40-year-old yoga instructor and professional dancer has decided with her partner, Elizabeth Shapiro, to \u201cjust do without\u201d therapy for now.<\/p>\n \u201cAccess to really good and affordable therapy really doesn\u2019t exist, and the Council for Relationships filled that role,\u201d said Shapiro, 41, who works in billing at a college. <\/p>\n The impending closure has left in a lurch the nonprofit\u2019s thousands of clients across eight<\/a> Philadelphia-area offices, as well as its more than 60 staff therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, and more than four-dozen<\/a> student interns and trainees.<\/p>\n The organization has struggled financially for years, said CEO Jason Anhorn<\/a>, citing the loss of external funding and key partnerships at a time of increased overhead costs. Additional pressure has come from competitors, including for-profit virtual therapy platforms, like BetterHelp, that are rapidly growing through aggressive advertising.<\/p>\n \u201cWe tried. We did everything we possibly could, and we lasted as long as we possibly could,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Leadership had discussed ways to attract more outside funding and more clients, but ultimately, the organization\u2019s board decided to cease operations \u2014 with only four weeks\u2019 notice, a swiftness that stunned staff. <\/p>\n In an April 30 email to staff, CFR\u2019s Chief Clinical Officer Sara Corse<\/a> asked therapists to begin transitioning clients quickly to minimize disruption.<\/p>\n \u201cEndings \u2014 especially ones we did not choose \u2014 can carry a lot for our clients,\u201d Corse wrote, acknowledging that employees were also figuring out their own steps. <\/p>\n \u201cOur ability to support clients through a thoughtful ending depends on clinicians continuing to show up and hold their work here through May, where possible,\u201d she said in the email.<\/p>\n Therapists were given a list of other Philadelphia-area organizations that offer pro-bono therapy, take Medicaid, or provide low-fee sessions. Demand is high, however, and there can be waitlists. <\/p>\n CFR is the latest community-based mental and behavioral health organization undone by significant financial headwinds. Main Line<\/a> Health will close its Women\u2019s Emotional Wellness Center<\/a> in June. The Wedge Recovery Centers<\/a>, formerly a major provider of addiction treatment in the region, closed last year.<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: READ MORE: Main Line Health is closing its Women’s Emotional Wellness Center in June<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n CFR has provided in-person, virtual and group therapy to between 3,500 and 5,000 people each year, according to Anhorn. <\/p>\n The bulk of its roughly $6 million<\/a> budget comes from the fees clients pay for counseling services. CFR does not accept health insurance. <\/p>\n Clients with financial means pay market-rate fees out of pocket.<\/p>\n CFR also offers no-fee or low-fee therapy through closely supervised student interns who are earning their master\u2019s degrees, as well as sliding-fee sessions from postgraduate therapists working toward licensure. <\/p>\n Anhorn said he and CFR board members were in talks late last week with another nonprofit about a potential acquisition and merger, hoping to salvage parts or all of the organization. Nothing is finalized, he said Thursday, declining to name the nonprofit.<\/p>\n An abrupt ending<\/p>\n CFR\u2019s board of directors<\/a> voted in late April to \u201ccease all therapy sessions by the end of May,\u201d Anhorn said. Staffers learned about the decision at an April 28 meeting.<\/p>\n Three staffers at the meeting told The Inquirer they felt blindsided. They were taken aback by the closure\u2019s tight timeline and urgency.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a lot of anger, a lot of frustration, a lot of surprise,\u201d said a senior staff therapist who asked for anonymity, fearing that speaking publicly would hurt new job prospects. <\/p>\n \u201cA lot of staff felt like they had no say. It also felt very much like we were misled,\u201d the therapist said. \u201cWe were made aware that there were some \u2018financial concerns,\u2019 but the word \u2018concerns\u2019 is not usually used when we\u2019re about to go out of business.\u201d<\/p>\n Anhorn said he tried \u201cto balance transparency with the responsibility not to create any kind of unnecessary fear and instability.\u201d <\/p>\n But some staffers said being kept in the dark about the degree of financial turmoil dealt a harder blow.<\/p>\n The Inquirer spoke with six current and former staffers who said several senior therapists \u2014 with loyal clients and caseloads built over decades at CFR \u2014 had left within the last 18 months.<\/p>\n Anhorn said \u201cthere was definitely some turnover\u201d after he became CEO in January 2025, which he called common when new leadership comes in. <\/p>\n Anhorn said therapists who leave CFR can take their clients with them since there\u2019s no noncompete agreement, which creates financial unpredictability. Some therapists left to go into private practice, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIf a couple of people leave and they take all their clients with them, that\u2019s a major shift in cash flow,\u201d Anhorn said.<\/p>\n Behind the scenes, Anhorn and board members brainstormed ideas to right the ship, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was bouncing between extreme optimism and then also what the realities were,\u201d he said. \u201cMy hope is that people realize that I was really fighting for this organization to thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n A training pipeline<\/p>\n Emily Mudd, a visionary in women\u2019s mental health<\/a>, founded CFR in 1932 as one of the first organizations in the country to offer marriage counseling. It helped pioneer sex therapy and so-called \u201csystemic therapy\u201d \u2014 the idea that an individual\u2019s behavior and past trauma impacts the family, CEO Emeritus Steve Treat<\/a> said.<\/p>\n From the start, CFR\u2019s mission was to serve \u201cthe poorest of the poor,\u201d Treat said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe people who need it the most are going to be losing one of the places they could go,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n CFR provided free therapy at public schools, veterans\u2019 groups, and group homes, working closely with Project HOME<\/a>, a Philadelphia nonprofit aimed at ending homelessness.<\/p>\n CFR also became a vital training pipeline for the region\u2019s therapists. In 2006, CFR and Thomas Jefferson University<\/a> partnered to create<\/a> a master\u2019s in family therapy program. CFR staff taught classes, trained, and supervised students, who were required to complete more than 300 client hours to graduate. <\/p>\n That partnership, which generated revenue for CFR, ended a few years ago, Treat said. <\/p>\n Many of Jefferson\u2019s master\u2019s students continued to choose CFR for clinical training requirements. CFR also has clinical interns from about 10 other area universities, including Bryn Mawr<\/a> College, Temple University<\/a>, and the University of Pennsylvania<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI was so excited to get selected for an internship with them,\u201d said Heather, who was supposed to start orientation for her clinical internship at CFR on May 11. She asked The Inquirer to withhold her last name because she doesn\u2019t want to risk her prospects. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m scrambling now for a new internship,\u201d she said. \u201cBut this closing is bigger than me and my internship \u2014 there are all the CFR employees who now have to find new ways and places to work, and even more, the thousands of clients who have depended on CFR for mental healthcare.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min Low-fee therapists at the Council for Relationships have helped Christina Gesualdi navigate life\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":952299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[265841,105,218,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-952298","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-council-for-relationships-philadelphia-therapy-closing","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-mental-health","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116555207719103411","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/952299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}