A mental health therapy clinic and training centre

Grove Centre’s mission is to support children and families within home, school and community environments by providing therapy, counselling and skills-training services to children, adolescents, parents, and families; and training, supervision, and consultation services to mental health and school professionals.

Sessions offered in-office (with protocols) or by telehealth (with Zoom Pro).

New trainings for professionals posted for April, 2024. Early registration fee deadline extended to Friday April 12.  Go to Trainings for Mental Health Professionals. 

Chris Conley

Meet Christopher Conley

MA, RCC, RMFT, CPT-S, RPT-S

Christopher is a Registered Clinical Counsellor, Registered Marriage & Family Therapist, Certified Play Therapist Supervisor, Registered Play Therapist Supervisor, Filial Therapy Instructor and Approved Provider of Child and Play Therapy Continuing Education.

Christopher has over twenty-five years’ experience providing individual therapy and counselling with children and adolescents, family therapy, play therapy, filial therapy, and parent education, promoting the involvement of all family members in the therapeutic process.

Christopher also provides supervision, training and consultation services to mental health professionals and school professionals. He has written articles and has conducted numerous training workshops and presentations across Canada and in Minnesota on child and play therapy, filial therapy, parent education and school classroom management.

Our Services

Grove Centre has services for families, mental health professionals and school professionals.

Asian family in field of sunflowers

Services for Families

Mental health therapy, counselling, and skills training services for children, adolescents, parents and families including individual therapy with children and adolescents, parent education and skills training, family therapy, filial therapy (parent-child relationship), play therapy, and consultation, advocacy and collaboration with community members. He works with children 18 months to 18 years old.

He is known for his intensive integrative therapeutic approach that addresses serious child and family issues and often facilitates faster child and family change and longer maintenance of change over time. This approach often integrates child therapy, attachment-based strategic parent education, family therapy, and at times filial therapy.

Stuffed animal

Services for Mental Health Professionals

Training for mental health professionals on child therapy, play therapy, filial therapy (attachment/parent-child), and family therapy.

Supervision for mental health professionals. In-person individual and group supervision and distance individual supervision.

Consultation services to mental health therapists and other mental health professionals and organizations on clinical work, programs and playroom design.

New in-person trainings now scheduled for April, 2024:

  • Intensive Child-Centered Play Therapy training April 22-44, 2024.
  • Intensive Filial Therapy training April 27-30, 2024.

Early registration fee deadline extended to Friday April 12. Training fees for these April trainings include two post-training supervision sessions.

Go to trainings for mental health professionals

Young students looking at teacher

Services for School Professionals

Training workshops for teachers, education assistants, and school administrators on classroom management.

Consultation services to teachers, education assistants, and school administrators for interventions to address student issues, classroom management and individualized education plans.

He is known for his relational strategic classroom management approach that focusses on enhancing the teacher-student relationship for preventing and effectively responding to classroom behaviour issues.

Upcoming Therapeutic Groups for Families

Grove Centre offers therapeutic groups for families. 

New mothers and their baby

Attachment-Based Strategic Parenting Group for Parents

Christopher will be providing a low-cost parenting group for parents. It will be focussed on assisting parents with learning new responses to child and adolescent issues that will result in increased child compliance, reduced parenting stress and closer parent child relationship. It will stress the importance of developing a close parent-child relationship as a prevention to serious issues. It will also provide specific and strategic parent responses to deal with child behaviour problems.

Mother consoling upset teenage son

Support Group for Children Coping with Parental Addiction

Christopher will be providing a low-cost children’s group for children ages 5 – 12 years old coping with parental active addiction. This Group is modelled on the Children are People Too Support Groups in Minnesota and across the USA developed by Rokelle Lerner. It is a psychosocial and educational 8-week group program to assist children to cope with familial substance abuse and addiction and to develop protective factors to reduce the risk of the children themselves developing problems with drugs and alcohol when they are older.

Upcoming Trainings for Professionals

Grove Centre and Christopher Conley have the following upcoming trainings for mental health professionals.

mom and floor playing blocks

Intensive Child-Centered Play Therapy Training

Length: 3 Days
Instructor: Christopher Conley
Sponsor: Grove Centre
Maximum participants: 8
Location: Grove Centre, In-Person, Burnaby, BC
Dates: April 22-24, 2024

Testimonial:
“I feel very well prepared after completing the child centered play therapy intensive training. I found the balance of discussion, review of skills, and role-plays enhanced my learning experience profoundly. Receiving direct feedback was incredibly helpful for my learning and has helped prepare me to use these skills in my professional practice. Chris was an excellent instructor and walked through all questions and possible scenarios based on his extensive experience as well as provide clinical experiences which helped tie material together.”
Courtney

Father and disabled son playing on floor

Intensive Filial Therapy Training

Length: 4 Days
Instructor: Christopher Conley
Sponsor: Grove Centre
Maximum participants: 6
Location: Grove Centre, In-Person, Burnaby, BC
Dates: April 27-30, 2024
Prerequisite: Training in Child-Centered Play Therapy

Testimonial:
“This is by far the best training I’ve ever taken.  It’s so relevant and meaningful. Chris is a gracious, generous, highly skilled and knowledgeable instructor. He models what he teaches throughout the training and it’s so natural to him that we didn’t even notice until day 3! Learning the Filial Therapy skills is hard. Using the techniques of role plays, feedback, discussion, video examples and traditional lecturing, made the Filial Therapy skills obtainable. We all left this training knowing we could offer this type of support to families in the agencies we work for. The training was fun, and I learned so much. I highly recommend this course!”
Diane

Two young girls playing blocks

Non-Directive Play Therapy Training

for cdn assoc for
play therapy (CAPT)

Length: 2 Days
Instructor: Christopher Conley
Sponsor: Cdn Assoc for Play Therapy
Location: Live Online
Dates: May 14-15, 2024