1.4 Effective Treatment Planning
Effective Treatment planning starts with the Human Service Professional. YOU! With every client you see, you bring your strengths, interpersonal skills, compassion, attitudes and behaviors that can enhance the outcomes of effective treatment planning, you hold the key! Yes, you and I have areas we need to “enhance” (areas that you believe may by weakness). With empathy and HOPE we can be a small part in making a difference in the life of another person. In order to start this process, effective treatment planning, you must embrace three broad areas: Interviewing stage and Skills, Diagnostic Skills and Documentation Skills.
Interviewing Skills
The interview starts with establishing a collaborative relationship with your client, consumer or student. This relationship starts at the very first contact either by phone or in person. You set the tone with your first greeting; did you extend your hand? What tone of voice did you use? Did you establish an atmosphere in your office that is safe, comfortable and welcoming? A therapeutic relationship based on respect, care, embracing unconditional positive regard and trust. Question, why should any client or anyone you meet immediately trust you or me? Trust must be earned, by how we choose to interact with our clients, the language we use, building on their strengthen while accepting their differences
You the “interviewer” must be able to use a balance of open and closed ended questions. This occurs by creating “a conversational partnership,” with your client. To fully understand what is occurring in that person’s life, we must truly LISTEN. In addition to the usage of open and closed ended questions, utilizing paraphrasing and summarization are necessary to accurately listen and understand the client from their perspective. Other skills that are beneficial are restatements or reflection of content while reviewing the information gathered, to ascertain if additional information is needed to fill in or provided a more detail description of the client’s life.
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Activity
There are several purposes for this initial interview; to establish a rapport, to start of the therapeutic alliance, collecting information while starting the assessment. The assessment leads to an effective treatment planning.
Diagnostic Skills
A good clinical diagnosis is best obtained by integrating several types of clinical information, so gather information from at least six different sources, including but not limited; the clinical interview (intake), clinical observations, records from other sources (school, employment, other agencies etc.) Testing (PLEASE KNOW, diagnoses are based on individuals’ behaviors and criteria, whereas testing is based on statistical averages of b