What does ethical therapy look like when your client has crossed borders, survived trauma, and endured systems that sow distrust rather than offer healing?
At the Institute for Family Services (IFS), ethical care is nurtured through liberation, relationality, and the radical honoring of wholeness.
A Liberation-Based Healing Lens Rooted in Community
IFS’s philosophy centers on liberation-based healing—a radical blend of decolonial theory, critical social learning, and family therapy. Here, therapy isn’t aimed at “fixing” symptoms; instead, it recognizes the resilience inherent in each individual and family, emphasizes systemic context, and fosters intergenerational transformation. Clients are understood as whole beings with complex identities, not defined by their presenting issues.
Progresando en Comunidad: Healing for Latinx Families in New Jersey
To directly address the scarcity of mental health services for Spanish-speaking families, IFS offers Progresando en Comunidad—a culturally tailored initiative delivering high-quality family, individual, and couples therapy in Spanish, regardless of immigration status. Drawing on over twenty years of clinical expertise, this program builds bridges, informs families about impactful issues, and fosters linkages toward sustainable community support. It’s designed to promote social justice and equity between society at large and Latinx families from diverse economic and cultural backgrounds.
Through Progresando en Comunidad, IFS provides therapy that spans family configurations, including those impacted by domestic violence, trauma, addiction, divorce, the challenges of adolescent development, and more—serving communities across class, gender identity, and immigration status.
Why This Conversation Matters
Migrant, Latinx, and nontraditional families often carry layered experiences of displacement, language barriers, and intergenerational wounds. Standard behavioral models can miss these relational and systemic nuances. Ethical care must:
- Center resilience and resistance, not just symptom relief.
- Contextualize personal and relational struggles within broader societal realities.
- Build culturally grounded support networks beyond conventional institutions.
Community Voices: Testimonials That Illuminate the Work
“Finding Community”
“I can only begin to share how incredibly supportive and beautiful and loving it was to be connected to everyone… they rallied and quickly communicated… he and my mom felt emotionally safe and cared for because of the beautiful and caring IFS community.”
-Client Testimonial
“Expanding Definitions of Courage and Masculinity”
“I never imagined that learning new notions of masculinity such as expanded emotionality, embracing femininity, balancing work and family life… could make a better and more courageous man.”
-Client Testimonial
Core Questions at the Heart of Ethical Practice
IFS invites its community—therapists, program participants, and allies—to reflect deeply:
- How can we make our voices matter in the face of challenging oppression and violence?
- How do traditional behavioral models fall short for immigrant, Latinx, and nontraditional families?
- What does it ethically mean to “show up” across language, cultural, and lived experience divides?
- How can we cultivate trust in communities shaped by institutional mistrust?
- How do we hold grief, survival, and resilience concurrently within therapy?
Narrative Connection: A Composite, Anonymized Vignette
Marisol’s Journey
Marisol, a Spanish-speaking mother, arrives carrying anxiety—not just from her experiences navigating oppressive systems, but from cultural isolation and disrupted intergenerational ties. Within the Progresando en Comunidad framework, therapy becomes relational. Culture circles fluidly expand across languages; sponsors—people with similar migration stories—walk alongside her; and her family’s strengths are honored, not pathologized. In this healing space, Marisol is seen, held, and given agency to envision a different future.
Anchoring in IFS’s Programs & Values
- Family Therapy for Migrant & Nontraditional Families
Through Progresando en Comunidad, IFS offers inclusive, culturally responsive therapy—regardless of immigration status—rooted in relational support, justice, and collective healing. - Post‑Graduate Training in Liberation‑Based Practice
Trainees gain experience working with Spanish-speaking and diverse families navigating multiple systems, guided by live supervision and reflective, decolonial methodologies. - Organizational Change Training
IFS offers workshops for educators, community leaders, and institutions seeking structural—not merely individual—transformation. - Liberation‑Based Healing Conference 2025 (LBHC 2025)
Taking place November 7–8, 2025, this flagship event invites dialogue on how healing, justice, and culture intersect—with voices from lived experience, scholarship, and activism.
Invitation to Join the Ongoing Conversation
This is a continuing journey—one we walk together:
- Participate in IFS, Progresando en Comunidad or join the upcoming LBHC 2025.
- Reflect on your own practice—where are you centering relational, culturally attuned, ethical care?
- Share this vision with those committed to healing grounded in justice, community, and liberation.
The Institute for Family Services invites you to co-create healing spaces where Latinx, migrant, and nontraditional families are honored in all their complexity—where empowerment, compassion, and ethical care converge to foster liberation.