Clinical Director

Start date: Prior to September 1, 2026

Closing date: June 22, 2026

Eli's Place Residential Treatment and Transition Centre exists because Ontario's mental health system, built around short stays, institutional settings and crisis response, cannot currently offer young adults with serious mental illness what they actually need — sustained recovery, resilience and the life and work skills to move forward. We are building something different. Canada's first long-term rural residential therapeutic community, where time, meaningful work and community life are the conditions for recovery.

Eli's Place will provide long-term residential care for young adults aged 18 to 35 living with serious mental illness, on a 600-acre farm and conservation property north of Guelph. Guests live and work together as a therapeutic community, combining individualized clinical treatment with structured, meaningful work in horticulture, conservation and land stewardship.

The Clinical Director will be a founding member of the leadership team, playing a central role in establishing a model of care that does not yet exist in Ontario. This is an opportunity to make a lasting difference — for the young adults Eli's Place serves and for how the mental health system responds to serious mental illness in this province.

Eli's Place is pre‑operational and on track to open in fall 2026. Founded over a decade ago by a family with lived experience of serious mental illness, the organization has spent years developing its model, securing its location, and building the board, partnerships and funding foundation needed to launch. The Clinical Director will join the founding team this summer, contributing to clinical team building and program development in the months before opening.

If this is the kind of work you have been looking for, we want to hear from you.

About Eli's Place

Eli's Place is a non‑profit organization providing long‑term residential care for young adults aged 18 to 35 living with serious mental illness, including schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder and major depression. The program is not of a fixed duration, but responds to the therapeutic needs of each individual Guest. We anticipate that, on average, this will involve residential care of approximately six to nine months, integrating individualized clinical treatment, structured meaningful work and community living within a therapeutic community model. This is followed by several months of support for Guests as they transition out of Eli's Place into housing, education and work.

The program is built on the Gould Farm model, a 113‑year‑old residential therapeutic community on a working farm in rural Massachusetts with a strong evidence base and documented long‑term outcomes. Gould Farm was selected as the Eli's Place program reference following a global review of 33 comparable centres.

Eli's Place was founded by David and Deborah Cooper following the death of their son Eli Nathan Cooper in 2010, after a long struggle with serious mental illness. In their grief, the Coopers committed to building what Eli himself said he needed — a place where people living with serious mental illness could find time, community and meaningful work, especially on the land in a natural setting, as the foundation for recovery. That commitment has driven the organization for over a decade. It is the reason Eli's Place exists and the reason it matters.

Role

The right person for this role recognizes that recovery happens through sustained relationships and community belonging — not through treatment alone. They are drawn to a model that reflects that, and ready for the responsibility of leading its clinical implementation.

The Clinical Director is the most senior clinical role at Eli's Place and a core member of the organizational leadership team. The role reports to the Executive Director and carries full clinical leadership responsibility for the program.

At opening, the clinical team will include a Nurse Practitioner, a complement of Clinicians across disciplines and a consulting Psychiatrist engaged on a sessional basis. The Clinical Director oversees the clinical team, leads clinical hiring and professional development, and holds ultimate accountability for clinical standards, regulatory compliance and the safety and quality of care delivered to Guests. The Clinical Director also provides clinical guidance to Guest services staff — including the residential and work program teams — ensuring their day‑to‑day work with Guests supports and reflects each Guest's therapeutic goals and care plan.

The Clinical Director has a program‑building mandate that distinguishes this role from a steady‑state clinical leadership position. In the pre‑launch and Year 1 phases, the Clinical Director will develop and implement the clinical model, establish clinical protocols and documentation standards, contribute to the admissions framework and help translate the therapeutic community approach into the day‑to‑day life of Eli's Place. Central to this is establishing a culture of continuous quality improvement — building the feedback loops, outcome measures and review practices that allow the program to learn from its own experience and improve over time. This requires both strong clinical judgment and a builder's orientation — someone comfortable assembling and leading a team while putting in the foundations for a program that holds itself to account.

At full capacity, Eli's Place will serve up to 30 Guests in residence at any given time, with up to 40 additional Guests being supported through the transition phase as they move into housing, education and work in the community.

Ideal Candidate

Education and Registration

• Master's degree or doctoral qualification in social work, psychology or a comparable qualification directly relevant to Eli's Place's therapeutic program
• Registration in good standing with the relevant Ontario regulatory college

Clinical Experience

• Sustained clinical experience working directly with people living with serious mental illness, including schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder and major depression
• Experience in residential, community‑based or long‑term care settings is strongly preferred
• Candidates whose experience is primarily in acute or crisis‑oriented care should be prepared to speak to how that experience translates to a long‑term, voluntary, recovery‑oriented model

Clinical Leadership

• Experience hiring, supervising and developing regulated health professionals across disciplines
• A demonstrated approach to clinical supervision that is collaborative and growth‑oriented rather than hierarchical
• Experience developing clinical protocols, programs or standards — not only delivering within frameworks established by others

Clinical Judgment and Risk

• Familiarity with the regulatory environment governing mental health services in Ontario
• Understanding of clinical risk in the context of a voluntary, non‑institutional residential setting where the default is openness and trust rather than restriction and control
• Ability to hold therapeutic intent and safety in balance when they come into tension
• Sound professional and ethical judgment in complex clinical situations

Alignment with the Model

• Genuine openness to or familiarity with the therapeutic community model and non‑institutional approaches to recovery
• Recognition that clinical leadership at Eli's Place is exercised from within the life of the community, not from a removed position
• Willingness to work on‑site and be present as a full participant in the daily life of the Eli's Place community — this is not a role that can be performed remotely or at a distance from the people it serves

How to Apply

Eli's Place is committed to equity, diversity and inclusion. We encourage applications from individuals of all backgrounds and identities and are committed to a fair and accessible hiring process.

To apply, please submit a résumé and a cover letter addressed to Dr. Chris Joseph, Executive Director. Your cover letter should speak to your relevant clinical experience, your understanding of the therapeutic community model and what draws you to Eli's Place specifically. The substance of the cover letter is an important part of the screening process.

Applications should be submitted by email to Ms. Annette Smith, Eli's Place Administrator, at annette@elisplace.org.

The posting closes June 22, 2026 at 5:00 PM ET. Only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted. In accordance with Canadian immigration requirements, priority will be given to Canadian citizens and permanent residents.

Candidates should ideally be available to commence employment prior to September 1, 2026.

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