It took some time and legal advice to make it work. “What really appealed to me was we can work together in a horizontal way,” Somerville said. Ten months in, he was able to bring on another therapist as a co-owner. In 2018, he launched the Alliance in Ridgewood, Queens, with his friend Kara O’Brien, who still leads administrative tasks and finances. He soon realized he wanted to collaborate with others, and that’s when he learned about cooperatives. He set out to start a private practice to offer services that aligned with his values and goals as a therapist-a non-capitalistic approach that extends agency to clients. The transparency in the client-therapist relationship creates a dynamic of trust, which grows from the structure Sánchez and her co-workers have built themselves.īut he quickly disliked what he saw in the field: paternalism toward patients, therapy as a luxury due to cost barriers, and a lack of transparency about money with patients and mental health professionals. There’s no cliques,” said Sánchez, a Black and Latina licensed clinical social worker at the Alliance. Another, currently between jobs, pays zero-something the group felt was worth it to avoid gaps in mental health care. That money goes toward operating costs like an electronic health record as well as hourly pay for all the workers, set at $40 an hour.īut the therapy rate is flexible-a negotiable sliding scale based on the needs of the patient and decided by consensus among the rest of the therapists.
When Dawn Sánchez takes on a new therapy client, she’s upfront about the money stuff.Īt the Alliance Psychological Services of New York, the out-of-pocket costs for people without insurance is, ideally, $80 or $90 per session.
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