A treatment plan on a disorder for Substance Use Problems In Adolescents, a counseling treatment plan typically will include one or more goals, objectives, and interventions. It will also usually include space for your client’s personal information, psychological history, and demographics, as well as a space for tracking progress. One goal may have multiple objectives and interventions if the clinician will be recommending more than one approach. This is important in culturally responsive therapy where collateral support may be needed such as inclusion of spiritual leaders, community partners, or family members.
Here are the components of a treatment plan broken down with more specifics:
Goal:
The goal of your treatment plan should be a broad statement about what the client would like to accomplish in therapy. While it’s ultimately your job as the clinician to put the treatment plan together as part of clinical documentation, the plan can be designed in session in collaboration with the client to make sure they’re fully involved and invested in the process.
You can ask your client what they hope to have achieved or accomplished by the time they’re done in therapy, or what they’d like to see be different in their life when they’re done. If this is too future-oriented for your client, or if they’re struggling to name any goals, you can share a few general ideas, and ask questions to help tailor the goals to fit their therapeutic needs.
Objective:
Your treatment plan objective should be a realistic, measurable, time-framed, and achievable descriiption of your goal. If your objective is too broad—or doesn’t include measurable time frames—it’ll be hard for you or your clients to know if you’ve actually made any progress together. By narrowing your focus and keeping this section very clear, it’ll be easier for you both to track how your clients are doing.
Intervention:
The intervention section of your treatment plan should lay out what method will be used to achieve the goal. You can also include details like who will provide the intervention, what will the intervention be, when (the duration and frequency) and where will the intervention take place.
When it comes to the intervention, keep in mind that the client may have a good idea of what has already worked for them and what hasn’t. If a client has been in counseling before, you can ask them what they’ve liked or disliked in therapy before, and use that (where clinically appropriate) to inform your plans.
This is also a good time to discuss if your client has any additional people, spiritual practices, culturally relevant practices, or rituals they would like to see incorporated into the intervention. Depending on how they respond, you may want to get a release of information to have someone intermittently join sessions, or to share information outside of a session. This approach would work best for clients who are used to a more collectivist style of healing, or who have a worldview that conflicts with the usual 1-to-1 therapy model.
