The Therapeutic Kitchen: Reimagining Community Mental Health Through Social Work Practice

While social workers have long recognized connection, belonging and community as protective factors for mental health, much of contemporary mental health care occurs in individual, office-based settings. This raises an important question: what role do social workers have in creating spaces where connection and belonging can be experienced, not simply discussed?

Drawing on observations from private practice, community programming and social enterprise, this lecture introduces the Therapeutic Kitchen Model – an emerging community-based framework that explores how shared experiential activities may foster emotional regulation, resilience, meaningful participation and social connection.

Using therapeutic baking and community-based initiatives as case examples, participants will examine how core social work values – including relational practice, strengths-based approaches, community engagement and social inclusion – can be translated into innovative mental health environments. The lecture will explore how social workers can move beyond symptom reduction to consider the broader conditions that support wellbeing, belonging and resilience.

Participants will be invited to reflect on the evolving role of social workers as community builders, program developers and social innovators, while considering future directions for community-based mental health practice, program evaluation and research.
 

Speaker: Courtney Fuciarelli, MSW, RSW

Courtney is a social worker, psychotherapist, social entrepreneur and founder of Fields & Flour Therapy and Wildflour Fields in Ontario. Her work focuses on developing innovative, community-based approaches to mental health that integrate experiential learning, connection and belonging.

Through her clinical practice, group programming and social enterprise initiatives, Courtney has explored the therapeutic potential of shared experiences – including baking, creativity and community participation – as pathways to emotional regulation, resilience and wellbeing. She is particularly interested in bridging clinical practice, community development and emerging models of mental health care.

Courtney’s current work centers on the development of the Therapeutic Kitchen Model, an evolving framework that examines how experiential and community-based environments can support mental health while strengthening social connection and social cohesion.

Supporting Individuals Ineligible or Not Ready for MAiD: Finding Meaning When Choice is Constrained

As MAiD has become embedded within the Canadian healthcare landscape, many individuals encounter MAiD not as an outcome, but as a context shaping how they understand their suffering, their future and their worth. While eligibility criteria and assessment processes are increasingly well defined, less attention has been given to the experiences of those who are found ineligible, uncertain or not ready for MAiD. For these individuals, suffering does not resolve when MAiD is unavailable. Instead, it often deepens and shifts, taking the form of prolonged uncertainty, erosion of identity, moral fatigue and existential loneliness. Many begin to internalize eligibility thresholds, questioning whether their suffering is “enough,” whether endurance is expected and whether continued life still merits care. Families and care teams are likewise affected, frequently experiencing frustration, grief and moral distress, particularly when care appears to retreat after a MAiD refusal.

Clinicians and volunteers often report uncertainty about how to remain present in these moments without escalating, minimizing or withdrawing. This lecture addresses a critical gap in contemporary practice, namely how to offer ethical, compassionate care when suffering persists and resolution is unavailable. We'll offer an ethics-informed, meaning-centered approach to supporting individuals who are ineligible or not ready for MAiD. Rather than focusing on provision or policy, the lecture reframes MAiD as a contextual influence on lived experience and explores how care can remain grounded when certainty, eligibility or outcome is absent.

Drawing on existential ethics, relational practice and lived experience, the lecture emphasizes presence without propulsion, recognition without endorsement and accompaniment without retreat. Participants will explore how suffering related to time, identity and endurance differs from crisis-based distress and how remaining present becomes a central ethical responsibility. The lecture integrates conceptual grounding, micro-examples from practice and guided reflection, recognizing that this work requires both ethical clarity and emotional capacity.

Learning Objectives

• Describe how MAiD functions as a contextual influence rather than solely an outcome
• Recognize forms of suffering rooted in time, meaning and identity that lack clinical recognition
• Distinguish reflective despair and moral fatigue from imminent risk
• Understand non-readiness as an ethical and relational state rather than avoidance
• Respond to expressions of despair, anger or uncertainty without minimizing, escalating or directing
• Identify and mitigate the ethical impact of abandonment following ineligibility or refusal
• Use language that affirms dignity, legitimacy and continued care when resolution is unavailable

This lecture equips professionals and volunteers with practical, ethically grounded approaches for remaining present in some of the most complex encounters in MAiD-related care. By strengthening relational capacity, clarifying ethical roles and normalizing uncertainty, the lecture supports improved patient experience, reduced moral distress and more sustainable care for those working alongside prolonged suffering.

When MAiD is unavailable, care does not end but it must change. This lecture invites participants to remain with suffering honestly and compassionately, affirming that when certainty fades and choices are constrained, presence itself becomes an ethical act.

Speaker: Lauren Clark (MSW, RSW)

Enhancing Social Cohesion and Preventing Violent Extremism: A Social Work Framework 

This lecture provides an overview of the crucial role social workers and other frontline practitioners play in preventing and countering hate-motivated and extremist violence. It highlights the skills and competencies that are most critical when working with individuals who may be at risk of, or who are already engaging in, harm and violence. The lecture also introduces youth leadership, digital literacy and online safety as core components of psychoeducation and primary, “upstream” prevention efforts aimed at fostering resilience and social cohesion. In addition, the lecture explores how professionals can support “downstream” intervention efforts with individuals who are at risk of, or already engaged in, harmful or concerning behaviours. Ethical considerations are discussed throughout, alongside the challenges and opportunities inherent in multisector collaboration and community organizing, with particular attention to contexts relevant to rural communities. Overall, the lecture supports practitioners in understanding risk and protective factors related to radicalization to violence and in navigating this emerging field of social work practice through the application of ethics and social justice principles.

Speaker: David Yuzva Clement, PhD, MSW (’24), MA, RSW
David is an Adjunct Research Professor at Carleton University’s School of Social Work, an Associate Fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, and a Research Advisor at the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence. His current research examines the nexus between social work and preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE). It also advances knowledge on children, youth and families affected by violent extremism and extremist ideologies online, and explores the interplay between community organizing, civic education and democracy.

David completed his MSW at Wilfrid Laurier University in 2024.

What if the future of mental health lies in rediscovering the wisdom of the past?

In this compelling talk, we’ll explore psychedelic medicine as both a cutting-edge frontier in mental health care and an ancient form of healing that has re-emerged after decades of suppression. Once silenced in the 1970s, psychedelic therapies are now at the centre of a global renaissance, with promising research highlighting their potential to treat conditions like PTSD, depression and end-of-life anxiety.

The first half of this lecture delves into the science and practice of this resurgence: Who can benefit from psychedelic medicine and why? What risks must we consider? How are practitioners trained to navigate this delicate and profound terrain? This overview provides a balanced perspective on the state of psychedelic therapy in Canada and beyond, offering insight into its potential and limitations.

In the second half, we’ll focus on an innovative social cure model of practice with these medicines. This approach weaves together psychedelic medicine with relational experiences. We'll become oriented to a holistic framework for healing in which to consume these substances therapeutically, and which facilitated integration of experiences. By emphasizing connection—both within oneself and with others—the social cure model ensures that the transformative power of these medicines is grounded in community, relationships and the broader fabric of healing.

Whether you’re a mental health professional, policymaker or simply curious about the future of human wellbeing, this talk will encourage you to explore how psychedelic medicines are quickly becoming an innovative path forward for mental health and wellbeing.

Raechel Pefanis, MDiv, MSW, RSW, PCC
Raechel is a registered social worker (turtle clan) in the field of psychedelic-assisted therapy and mental health innovation. As one of five shareholders of Alethia Psychedelic Therapy, a pioneering organization specializing in psilocybin, MDMA and ketamine-assisted therapy, Raechel works at the intersection of psychotherapy and traditional healing practices to help individuals and communities transform. 

An Exploration of the Upstream Funding Model and its’ Impacts on the Lives of Equity-Seeking Populations in the Region of Waterloo: A Case Study for Health and Social Service Working Professionals

Dr. Ginette Lafrenière is a professor at the Lyle S. Hallman Faculty of Social Work where she has been teaching since 2002. In 2003, she founded the Social Innovation Research Group (SIRG), a feminist community-based research centre that works primarily with equity-denied organizations.  

Since 2023, she has been collaborating with the Reconciliation, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (REDI) team at the Region of Waterloo on evaluations relative to an innovating funding project dedicated to equity-led grassroots organizations. The “Upstream Fund” is a trust based funding envelope which attempts to level the playing field and set a new standard for inclusive and equitable funding practices for First Nations, Inuit and Métis (FNIM), African, Caribbean and Black (ABC) and racialized communities.

Together with Fauzia Baig (Director, REDI team) and Neb Zachariah (REDI Advisor), the group will present the Upstream model and the transformative reverberations that this project has had in our community.  Social workers will be particularly interested in how such funding has contributed to enhanced mental health and positive outcomes for youth, women and other equity-seeking groups in the Region of Waterloo.