Sercle Inc serves clients in financial need who are seeking affordable therapy. Sercle Inc clients cannot afford market rates for therapy, are uninsured or underinsured, and have an annual household income below $50,000.

By underinsured, we are referring to people who have health insurance that does not include affordable in-network mental health benefits. This could be due to a high deductible and/or a copay higher than $70 per session for individual therapy (or higher than $80 per session for couples or family therapy). Learn more.

1. Reach out to the client within 4 business days. If it is not a good fit, or you’re not accepting new clients, refer them back to Sercle for assistance in finding a different therapist. If you’re not accepting new clients, please update your availability on your account dashboard.
2. Schedule your first session, and negotiate the Sercle session rate ($30-$60 for individuals, $30-$80 for couples/family). Then, proceed as you would with any other self-pay client. Your intake forms, consent forms, payment systems, and preferred communication method are all integrated on your account dashboard.

*If you are a student intern, you will charge a flat, $30 rate for all modalities.

Yes. As long as your profile page indicates that you are accepting new Sercle clients, we will do our best to send them in your direction.

Just one. Your profile page has a field for you to indicate and update your availability to show if you have space for a new client or not.

Yes. Your current low(er) fee paying client(s) can become Sercle clients. However, they would need to join our community platform.

In addition to strengthening your digital presence and fielding queries from potential clients who discover Sercle in their own web search or via word of mouth, we support therapists who wish to conduct outreach to gain additional referrals. If there are organizations in your community you’d like to contact, please let us know by emailing info@sercleinc.com and we can provide you with the needed materials and information.

Thanks to our community platform and targeted marketing ads designed to increase the number of referrals throughout the country.

Yes, with a caveat. After signing up for Sercle, you may indicate on your profile page that you are not currently accepting Sercle clients. We do ask that within six months’ time, you change this status on your page to make room for at least one Open Path client in your caseload.

Of course. We hope that Sercle will help alleviate the burden of saying no to certain clients. While we can’t promise there will be a therapist available to work with them, we welcome the referral and will do our best to help them find an affordable clinician.

If there are no available Medicaid providers in the client’s area, a client could use Sercle to meet their need for affordable mental health care. It’s important to note that Sercle rates are much higher than Medicaid rates for psychotherapy. If there are available Medicaid providers in the client’s area, we ask that they not use Sercle.

No. You will be able to indicate whether or not you are accepting Sercle clients on your profile page. This page is always in your control.

The Sercle sliding scale rates of $30-$60 per session for individuals and $30-$80 for couples and family are based on a standard, 50-minute session. If a session will be longer than 50 minutes, you can prorate the session fee. For example, you could charge $100 for a 90-minute intake session. You may not offer sessions that are shorter than the standard, 50-minute session.

If you have any further questions regarding setting the fee, please email Sercle at therapists@sercleinc.com.

Canadian therapists can charge Sercle clients between $30-$60 CAD for individual sessions or $30-$80 CAD for couples or family sessions.

No. Sercle therapists can charge the negotiated Sercle rate at the time of the session. We ask that you not charge clients in advance of sessions, especially for multiple sessions at a time. With the client’s consent, you may request to keep a credit card on file so that session fees are collected in a timely manner.

Sercle member therapists are allowed to charge up to $80 for couples counseling and/or family therapy sessions. If you plan to charge greater than $60 for this kind of session, we recommend that you share that information on your Sercle profile so that clients know what to expect.

We do not allow member therapists to raise the rate after a certain number of sessions to an amount over $60. We ask that you see Sercle clients within the range of $30-60 per individual session ($30-80 for couples and family counseling).

Yes, if a client’s financial situation significantly improves, it is acceptable to renegotiate their fee. For example, if the client is paying $30 a session and a therapist’s rate is $125 and the client suddenly gets a high paying job, we believe it’s financially and therapeutically appropriate and important to change the fee. The therapist would be encouraged to respectfully renegotiate the rate with the client at that time. If the client has any questions about their membership with Sercle at that point, the therapist can direct them to Sercle at info@sercleinc.com.

Yes, student interns in their final, clinical internship can become Sercle member therapists by submitting their application and providing Sercle with proof of supervision, proof of internship enrollment, and a signed supervision contract.

You also must agree to offer $30 sessions for all modalities to Sercle clients.

It’s true: most of us already offer lower fees to certain clients. However, when we offer lower fees to clients we are acting as lone altruistic individuals. By becoming a Sercle Network Member Clinician you put your altruism to work, becoming part of a global movement of clinicians dedicated to ending economic disparity in the mental health field, especially for trauma survivors. Also, it’s our intent to make Sercle a place of support for clinicians offering low-fee therapy: in addition to your profile page bringing increased traffic to your website, we offer an online community for networking, and other benefits listed here.

Start the application process here. A Sercle staff member will review your application and look up your license by the close of the following business day. If we can’t find your license information or you are a postgraduate intern, pre-licensed professional, an associate, or a student intern, we will follow up with you via email.

You must be a licensed or provisionally licensed (Pre-Licensed/License Eligible) mental health clinician with a graduate degree in psychotherapy, counseling, or a related field from an accredited institution. You must also pass our peer-reviewed online application process.

We also accept student interns, who are allowed to offer $20 sessions to Sercle clients. In that case, you must be completing your final, clinical internship to obtain your master’s degree. You will be required to provide proof of supervision, proof of internship enrollment, and a signed supervision contract.

Yes, we welcome therapists in different countries to join Sercle. In order to participate, you will need to be a Registered Social Worker, Registered Psychologist, or Registered Psychotherapist and meet the following criteria:

1. You must provide documentation of your postgraduate degree in psychotherapy, counseling, or a related field from an accredited institution.
2. You will need to provide documentation showing that you are registered with your local regulatory or governing body. 

We look forward to reviewing your application.

Yes, it is possible to have a profile on our site for a clinic or group practice. However, we recommend having therapists from the clinic use individual profiles on our site for two reasons:

1. It provides a greater SEO push for your clinic.
2. We’ve learned that people are far more likely to click on a face, than a company logo. The individual clinician can link to your main website from their profile.

If you would like to go with having the clinic posted only, we would need an application from the point person (who would receive all of the emails coming from Sercle staff and prospective clients).

After you submit the application, please email the names of the therapists in your practice that plan to see Sercle clients to therapists@sercleinc.com. We will verify their license.

If there are interns at the clinic, we can accept them into Sercle as long as they already hold their postgraduate degree in counseling, psychology, or related field. Postgraduate interns can submit their supervisors’ name if they do not hold their own license.

*Please Note: For a group profile, all participating therapists must have completed a master’s degree in a psychotherapy-related field and be licensed, provisionally licensed, or pre-licensed. Student interns cannot be included in group profiles, all student interns must have individual profiles.

If you would like to create profiles for each therapist, which we recommend, each therapist would need to fill out the application in order to create their profile.

The application can be found here.

After being approved to be a Sercle Clinician, we will send you a username and password to set up your profile page. Once we send a client your way, they will get in touch with you to schedule the first therapy session.

We simply use it for our own records: Sercle will never share or sell your information. Our only goal is to connect you with survivors who can’t afford therapy while supporting your practice in the process.

Absolutely nothing! Part of our mission is to support you in your therapy or counseling practice. As Sercle grows and our visibility increases, your visibility will increase too. It’s our belief that your involvement with Sercle Inc will have a positive impact for your full-fee practice as well, driving new web traffic to your practice’s homepage. Also, we’re committed to supporting your practice in other ways: Click here to learn more about the benefits of being a Sercle Therapist Network Member Clinician.

This is between you and your client. However, we expect that all Sercle clients have access to one-on-one sessions with their therapist if they prefer it.

Sercle allows its member therapists to offer online therapy. We strongly encourage all therapists offering online therapy to research the guidelines or policies of their state’s licensing board as well as of their medical liability insurance policy. Some therapists may only be able to offer remote counseling to clients located in the same state as where they are licensed. We also highly recommend that therapists conduct an initial assessment with new clients requesting online therapy to determine the appropriateness of this approach before regular sessions are undertaken.