Family Essentials Counseling 721 North Pines Road, Spokane Valley, WA 99206

"I don't want to slam the therapist that we had here. But woof. Glad we were able to find a new practice with someone who is perhaps a little more qualified. If that were my first experience with a therapist, I wouldn't ever go back or find value in doing therapy work. Thank goodness it wasn't and I could help my husband see that it can be so much better."

"DO NOT DO IT. These people DO NOT care about well-being. And they don’t care if they play a part in making someone’s mental situation worse. If you inconvenience the billing department in any way, they drop you like hot sack of rocks. And they do not care how much it hurts you. Even if your mental health is going south. This happened at a VERY bad time. And they DO NOT care. They’ll slap ya in the face and then leave you reeling. They do not offer assistance to even help you get ideas on what can be done next, which could be the least they could do since they made plenty of money off of me and pretty much got me nowhere because they kept bouncing me around providers. I gather they are quite disorganized and What they did to me is cruel and heartless. Alls I got was a narcissistic “this will save you trouble down the road.” Alls they’ve done us created a few panic attacks and worsening depression. Thanks guys! But please. GIVE ME A BREAK! The only ones saving themselves trouble is Family Essentials. Heaven forbid they might have to work a bit harder at billing. Id like to say that my insurance pays 100%. So this is a matter that is completely out of my control. I did not fail to pay bills or anything remotely like that. I can only gather that whoever is running the show and making the rules…. Should have no business being in the industry. It’s impossible that they have a single empathetic bone in their bodies. HORRIBLE!! I wondered why ratings were so low. Guess I found out first hand. My bad for not reading reviews more carefully."

"Rachel is amazing. I’ve seen multiple therapists and she is the first one I’ve felt progress with. Thank you!"

"To anyone looking into Family Essentials Counseling, please take all of the reviews based on the billing department seriously; they are accurate; the billing department is terrible here and the sole reason for the single-star review! I found Family Essentials Counseling at a very low point in my life. Annie K is a fantastic therapist; I have seen about eight therapists between 2012 and now (I got bounced around due to moving to new cities, insurance changes, and therapists moving away), and she is easily the best counselor I have worked with. She is excellent, and if this review were solely about her, I would leave a 5-star review. I am giving 1 star (I would give 0 if possible) because Family Essentials Counseling's billing department is abysmal. They make sloppy mistakes that have huge financial impacts on the client, and they simply refuse to do their job. The billing department makes a great therapy option into something that should be avoided at all costs. One reason for my single-star review is that the billing department messed up my insurance and charged me $60/week when I had full coverage and no copay. They did reimburse me, but I was unemployed while seeing Annie initially, and $60/week was not something that caused financial strain. I appreciated that they fixed the problem, but it would have been nice if they didn't make the problem in the first place. My main gripe with the billing department is they flat-out refused to make a single-case exception when I requested one since I was changing insurance providers and Annie was no longer in-network. Filling out single-case exceptions is a part of the job of a billing office for a counseling clinic. I asked three times if they could please do it, and I made it clear that, without this form, I would need to find a new therapist. I explained to them that I was having great success with Annie, that I had established trust with her over the past four months, and that, while I wanted to remain her client, the $85/week cost of seeing Annie as an out of network provider was something I could not afford. They refused each time, claiming their office was "too small" to handle those forms. The clinic's staffing issues are not my problem, but the billing department made them my problem by forcing me to find a new therapist. Filling these forms out is a part of the job; this is nothing shy of negligence and laziness. I LOVED working with Annie. I would give her a million stars. But Family Essentials Counseling is not a good business and should be avoided."

"Started my services with an intern in 2018. She left a year after and I was switched to a counselor that was established there. My counselor was the most supportive figure I had in my life for 3 years. She got offered a new job position closer to home and started the transition from moving her clients to other therapists in the clinic. The new office staff overbooked the counselors so the existing patients had to leave the clinic. The psychologist tried to give me some type of evaluation and at the end of it barred me from knowing my diagnosis since they “closed out” my file a week after. I was given no referrals and my counselor helped me find a new clinic to go to and thankfully they accepted me within a month. I have signed consent forms to get my records sent to either me or the clinic and the owner Elizabeth has not been much help either. Absolutely pathetic. Worst off, they show the receptionists private emails between patients and counselors, which is super inappropriate. I work in healthcare and I would never even mention them to my patients. I am glad to see their earlier reviews reflect their poor service. October update: they sent a total of 3 pages of my 100+ file to us despite their reply. Awful"