Roots vs Routes
A decolonial, intersectional family therapy framework, written by our Founder and Clinical Director and published with a DOI. It is the framework the practice's clinical and educational work is built on.
There wasn't a framework already built that held migration, race and family structure together instead of as separate specialties. So we wrote our own.
It starts from a simple but often missed idea. What looks like an individual's failure, or a family's dysfunction, is frequently a structure's failure first: migration policy, racism, poverty, systems never built with a family in mind.
Roots
Family, culture, language, faith, the people you come from.
Routes
Racism, low expectations, schools, systems, who gets believed, migration.
How it's used
It's built into the actual clinical formulation, not just the marketing. Every assessment here separates what's rooted in your family already from what pressure is coming from outside it. That's a working tool clinicians use to structure the session itself. It's built into our formulation templates and our clinician induction, and it's the same lens adapted for schools work.
Where it shows up
- Hold the Roots, Change the Route →The seven-session parenting group built on the model. The model explains why a family is where it is. The program is what the adults in the room do about it.
- Family of Origin →A group that draws directly from the framework.
- Justice-Involved Support →Where a structure's failure is most often read as a person's.
- An Inclusive View of Attachment →The evidence underneath.