Are our rates inaccessible to you?
We can’t support you if we don’t know what you need!
New / Perspective Clients - Please let your clinician know that our fees are inaccessible to you during your initial consultation.
Current Clients - Please let either the admin team or your clinician know that you are experiencing financial hardship and need to discuss your payment structure.
What You Can Expect From Us:
If you are experiencing financial hardship or our rates are inaccessible to you and your family, you should start by letting the admin team or your clinician know (whichever you feel most comfortable with).
From there, you can expect to have a discussion with admin or you clinician (again, whichever feels best to you) about your needs in general. Likely this discussion will not be purely based in numbers and cost, as there is more than cost that factors in to ensuring you are receiving quality care. You can expect us to let you lead the discussion and let us know your needs.
After discussing some options, we will need time to check which options the practice can support at this time. If none of the original options can be supportive, we will keep the discussion going to see if there are other ideas for getting your needs met.
Most importantly, you can expect us to approach this without shame or judgement toward you. Inability to pay says nothing about your morality or character, it just says you’re unable to pay a full rate at this time! Money is difficult to talk about, and asking for support can be super intimidating. We’re all learning to do it together, and you’re a person before you are a customer.
What We Ask of You:
If you are requesting discounted services, we ask a couple things of you:
Communicate with us - please let us know if you are struggling financially, and please keep in touch as we figure out a plan
Look over the self reflection tools on this page to reflect on the difference between a sacrifice and a hardship and the privileges you hold (we will not ask you for your answers)
Green Bottle Visual
Self Assessment and Note
Based on the above, think about what might be an equitable payment structure to set up
Self Assessment Tool #1
Self-Assessment Tool #2
Read the following statements and count how many are true for yourself
Both of your parents went to college
You went to college
You don’t have any dependents
Your parents provide financial support, consistently or occasionally
You have personal savings
You are debt free
You have your own car
You have generational wealth
You hold cis privilege
You hold white privilege
You have health insurance or reliable access to healthcare
You’ve had consistently secure housing
You are employed or do not need to work to meet your needs
You have expendable income or can easily buy new items
You can afford to take time off for leisure
How many statements were true for you?
Lowest 0-3 4-7 8-11 12-15 Highest
This scale is for reference. How you determine your place on the sliding scale is ultimately up to you. If helpful, consider Alexis J. Cunningfolk’s differentiation between sacrifice and hardship with regards to access:
“If paying for a class, product, or service would be difficult, but not detrimental, it qualifies as a sacrifice. You might have to cut back on other spending in your life (such as going out to dinner, buying coffee, or a new outfit), but this will not have a long term harmful impact on your life. It is a sacred sacrifice in order to pursue something you are called to do. If, however, paying for a class, product, or service would lead to a harmful impact on your life, such as not being able to put food on the table, pay rent, or pay for your transportation to get to work, then you are dealing with hardship. Folks coming from a space of hardship typically qualify for the lower end of the sliding scale. I find the idea of sacrifice versus hardship to be a very useful nuance when talking about class and access because it recognizes and respects that paying for something might still be a challenge even if it is just a short-term one, while giving appropriate space for those who are dealing with financial hardship.”
Self assessment tools originated from Alexis J. Cunningfolk’s blog post “The Sliding Scale: A Tool of Economic Justice” found on Wort’s and Cunning Apothecary’s website. You can read more here.