Couples Therapist (MSW/RSW or RP)

Young Sprouts Therapy; Canada; Remote; CAD 120,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Steady referrals

Admin support

Office Thornhill

Marketing support

Flexible caseload

No exclusivity

Job summary

Young Sprouts Therapy in Thornhill, Ontario, seeks a licensed therapist to provide couples counselling for diverse family structures and life stages. The caseload can be tailored to exclusively couples or a mix of couples, family, and individual work, with evening availability and in-person sessions at our Thornhill office.

You will coordinate with child, family, and assessment clinicians, using Jane EMR, with virtual sessions across Ontario optional.

Qualifications

• Registered and in good standing with the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers as a Registered Social Worker with an MSW, or with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario as a Registered Psychotherapist.
• Demonstrated experience working with couples, not individual therapy only.
• Training in at least one recognised couples model, such as Gottman, EFT, PACT, or Imago.
• Competent at screening for intimate partner violence and at managing a session that turns high-conflict.
• Comfortable raising and discussing sex, intimacy, and desire without deflecting.
• Current professional liability insurance and a clear Vulnerable Sector Check.
• Able to work in person at our Thornhill office. Virtual couples sessions are available across Ontario.
• Familiar with PHIPA obligations and comfortable working in an EMR. We use Jane.

Responsibilities

• Provide couples counselling to partners at every stage: premarital, newly cohabiting, long-married, blended, and separating.
• Work with the presenting issues couples actually arrive with: communication breakdown, recurring conflict, trust and affair recovery, intimacy and desire differences, parenting disagreements, financial stress, and cultural or interfaith differences.
• Screen for intimate partner violence and coercive control, and recognise when conjoint work is contraindicated and what to offer instead.
• Set and hold clear policies on individual sessions and confidentiality within couples work, so nobody is surprised by how information is handled.
• Offer discernment counselling to couples who are genuinely unsure whether to stay together.
• Collaborate with our child, family, and assessment clinicians where the same family is seen across more than one service.
• Complete intakes, treatment plans, and progress notes in Jane within our documentation timelines.
• Hold a consistent weekly schedule with real evening availability, because that is when most couples can attend together.

Skills

Couples counselling

High-conflict screening

Education

MSW + RSW (Ontario)

CRPO RP accreditation

Tools

Jane EMR

Job description

Young Sprouts Therapy is a child, teen, and family practice in Thornhill serving Vaughan and York Region. Couples counselling sits alongside our family therapy and parent work, and it is a service we currently turn away more of than we can take on.

What makes this caseload distinctive is who walks through the door. A good share of the couples we see are already connected to the practice: a child in therapy, a parent in coaching, a family in the middle of an assessment. The strain shows up as co-parenting conflict, an unequal division of labour, or the particular exhaustion of raising a child with additional needs. That said, plenty of the couples we see are not parents at all, and this is not a co-parenting counselling role in disguise.

The caseload is yours to shape. If you want to work exclusively with couples, we can build toward that. If you would rather hold a mix of couples, family, and individual work, that is available too.

What you would be doing

• Provide couples counselling to partners at every stage: premarital, newly cohabiting, long-married, blended, and separating.
• Work with the presenting issues couples actually arrive with: communication breakdown, recurring conflict, trust and affair recovery, intimacy and desire differences, parenting disagreements, financial stress, and cultural or interfaith differences.
• Screen for intimate partner violence and coercive control, and recognise when conjoint work is contraindicated and what to offer instead.
• Set and hold clear policies on individual sessions and confidentiality within couples work, so nobody is surprised by how information is handled.
• Offer discernment counselling to couples who are genuinely unsure whether to stay together.
• Collaborate with our child, family, and assessment clinicians where the same family is seen across more than one service.
• Complete intakes, treatment plans, and progress notes in Jane within our documentation timelines.
• Hold a consistent weekly schedule with real evening availability, because that is when most couples can attend together.

Qualifications and requirements

• Registered and in good standing with the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers as a Registered Social Worker with an MSW, or with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario as a Registered Psychotherapist.
• Demonstrated experience working with couples, not individual therapy only.
• Training in at least one recognised couples model, such as the Gottman Method, Emotionally Focused Therapy, PACT, or Imago.
• Competent at screening for intimate partner violence and at managing a session that turns high-conflict.
• Comfortable raising and discussing sex, intimacy, and desire without deflecting.
• Current professional liability insurance and a clear Vulnerable Sector Check.
• Able to work in person at our Thornhill office. Virtual couples sessions are available across Ontario.
• Familiar with PHIPA obligations and comfortable working in an EMR. We use Jane.

Considered an asset

• Gottman Method training at Level 2 or 3, or certification as a Certified Gottman Therapist.
• EFT externship, core skills, or ICEEFT certification.
• Discernment counselling training for couples on the brink of separating.
• Sex therapy training, or genuine comfort working with sexual concerns.
• Perinatal or transition-to-parenthood training.
• Experience with neurodiverse couples, including partners with ADHD or autism.
• Experience with cultural, interfaith, and newcomer families navigating differing expectations of marriage.
• 2SLGBTQ+ affirming practice, including experience with non-monogamous and non-traditional relationship structures.
• Fluency in a language other than English. Russian, Hebrew, Mandarin, Cantonese, Farsi, Italian, and Punjabi all come up among the families we see in Thornhill and Vaughan, and any additional language is genuinely useful here.
• Evening and weekend availability, which is when couples can most often attend together.

What the clinic provides

• A steady referral stream, so your calendar fills without you having to chase it.
• Intake, scheduling, billing, insurance receipts, and follow‑up handled by our admin team.
• A furnished office at 1137 Centre Street, Thornhill, set up for couples work rather than borrowed from a playroom, with free on‑site parking.
• Marketing, website, and search presence, so you do not need to build a practice or a personal brand to keep your calendar full.
• A collaborative team including child clinicians, an occupational therapist, and a psychologist, which matters when you are working with parents whose children we also see.
• Genuine schedule control. You set your availability and your caseload size.
• No exclusivity clause and no non‑compete. If you hold a caseload elsewhere or run your own practice alongside this, that is your business.

Compensation

• $90–$110 for each 50-minute couples session. Where you land depends on your registration, your couples-specific experience, and relevant approved training such as Gottman or EFT.
• Where a longer session is clinically warranted and the couple agrees to it, we bill and pay pro rata rather than squeezing the work into fifty minutes.
• Paid monthly against completed sessions. Nothing is deducted for desk rent, admin, or platform fees. The rate you agree to is the rate you are paid.

Registered and in good standing with the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers as a Registered Social Worker with an MSW, or with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario as a Registered Psychotherapist. Demonstrated experience working with couples, not individual therapy only. Training in at least one recognised couples model, such as the Gottman Method, Emotionally Focused Therapy, PACT, or Imago. Competent at screening for intimate partner violence and at managing a session that turns high-conflict. Comfortable raising and discussing sex, intimacy, and desire without deflecting. Current professional liability insurance and a clear Vulnerable Sector Check. Able to work in person at our Thornhill office. Virtual couples sessions are available across Ontario. Familiar with PHIPA obligations and comfortable working in an EMR. We use Jane.