Ranch Ehrlo expanding family treatment program

The Ranch Ehrlo Society wants to help more families develop healthy life skills by expanding their family treatment program.

In the family treatment program, social workers work with families who are at risk of having kids removed from them or may have recently had their kids returned to them from care.

Patti Petrucka is with the Ranch Ehrlo Society and is the family treatment program manager.

“The family treatment program works with families, we’re about 40 hours a week of face to face in home family services,” Petrucka said.

She said many of the families they work with have, in the past, dealt with other groups and not been able to get what they needed. She said the program is quite intensive.

“We go into the home and we work on different things like communication or bed time routines with their children, or nutrition or cooking,” he said, adding the program is very versatile.

“We adapt our services to meet the needs, we have access to speech pathologists, occupational therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists.”

Petrucka said the program offers life skills support along with housing, which can be important for some families as they may not have a safe place to live.

The program manager said the expansion is welcome as now they will have access to a bigger work space and be able to help at least 23 different families at a time.