Who We Are | Connections Developmental Clinic

Connections is a clinic based in the Kelowna area of the Okanagan.

At the core of what we do is our belief in the importance of connections. Connections between people and connections between ability and functioning, and all the complexities that weaken or strengthen them.

With this in mind, our mission is to promote the mental health and well-being of the infants, children, teens, and families in our community by offering assessment, counselling, and parent support services.

Our Approach

1

Comprehensive

To ensure our work together is helpful, the services we provide are comprehensive and include a whole-person approach. This means that in addition to exploring and supporting cognitive, social, emotional, and behavioural functioning, we also value and respect individual experiences and diverse backgrounds and the importance of those contributions to development and well-being.

2

Collaborative

Just as our development and current functioning are influenced by our experiences with others, we believe that collaboration (with you, your child, family members, educators, physicians, other clinical professionals, etc.) is crucial to deepening our understanding of individual strengths and challenges, and also to facilitating access to supports that will promote well-being.

3

Curiosity

Children are curious. As part of their development, they explore the world around them, taking in detail after detail. As adults, our appreciation for curiosity is sometimes lost, especially when we perceive it as interfering with ALL. THE. THINGS. We also tend to react to behaviours (e.g., crying, neediness, school avoidance, verbal or physical aggression) based on our own experiences and expectations, which may not always be helpful. In our work together, we hope to encourage you to be curious about the factors that may be contributing to those reactions, as well as re-ignite your curiosity for your child's experience, with a goal of helping you to respond to behaviours in a way that is helpful, for everyone.

For those seeking an assessment, you may be here because you're curious about functioning (at school, at home, within the community). We look forward to the opportunity to foster your curiosity by helping you to understand the various areas that play a role in functioning, and by increasing your awareness of supports and strategies best suited to those individual areas of strength and need.

4

Compassion

Parenting can be hard. Learning can be hard. Supporting a neurodiverse brain can be...you guessed it...hard. There is so much fun, joy, and growth that comes with parenting, learning, and supporting neurodiversity and, at the same time, we're all human. Humans make mistakes, feel like giving up, and don't always respond with patience and understanding.

At Connections, all of the services we provide are grounded in the belief that everyone is doing the best that they can. Parents don't set goals of self-doubt when caring for their newborns, parents don't wake up intending to yell at their child(ren); and children and teens don't make plans to struggle with academics, social interactions, or emotional and behavioural regulation...and yet, these things happen, because we're human. If you've ever thought, What kind of mother thinks/does that?, or I'm a terrible parent, or if you've ever heard a child say, "I'm the worst" or "I'm so stupid", you're in the right place.