WRITING EFFECTIVE TREATMENT PLANS:
The Pennsylvania CASSP Model
Instructor: Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes PhD, LPC-MHSP
Executive Director: AllCEUs.com
Podcast Host: Counselor Toolbox, Happiness Isn’t Brain Surgery and Addiction Counselor Exam Review
Objectives
• Learn the principles of the CASSP model
• Review the difference between goals, objectives and interventions
• Identify qualities of good goals, objectives and interventions
• Services are planned to meet the individual needs of the child, rather than to fit the child into an existing service.
• Services
• Consider the child’s family and community contexts
• What resources are available
• What are their capabilities and needs
• Are developmentally appropriate and child- specific (not little adults)
• Build on the strengths of the child and family to meet the mental health, social, and physical needs of the child.
• Services recognize that family is the child’s primary support system
• The family is a full partner in all stages of the decision-making and treatment planning process, including implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.
• A family may include biological, adoptive, and foster parents, siblings, grandparents and other relatives, and other adults committed to the child.
• Examine the people with whom the youth spends the most time. (runaways/homeless youth; youth in boarding school)
• What is the family’s perception of:
• Functioning
• Strengths
• Priorities
• Cultural values
• Whenever possible, services are delivered in the child’s home community, drawing on formal and informal resources to promote the child’s successful participation in the community.
• Community resources include not only mental health professionals and provider agencies, but also social, religious, and cultural organization and other natural community support networks
• Services are planned in collaboration with all the child-serving systems involved in the child’s life.
• Representatives from all these systems and the family collaborate to
• Define the goals with the child
• Develop a service plan
• Develop the necessary resources to implement the plan
• Provide appropriate support to the child and family
• Evaluate progress.
• Culture determines our world view and provides a general design for living and patterns for interpreting reality that are reflected in our behavior.
• Services that are culturally competent are provided by individuals who have the skills to recognize and respect the behavior, ideas, attitudes, values, beliefs, customs, language, rituals, ceremonies, and practices characteristic of a particular group of people.
• Questions that must be answered
• What is the view of the child in this culture?
• What are cultural expectations for functioning in this area?
• What is the cultural perception for need for help and who from?
• What are cultural strengths that can be capitalized on?
• What does the culture perceive as the child and family’s strengths?
• Services take place in settings that are the
• most appropriate and natural for the child
• and family and are the least restrictive and
• intrusive available to meet the needs of the
• child and family.
Treatment Plan Characteristics
• An effective treatment plan should be both informative and practical.
• A person reading a treatment plan should be able to grasp the major concerns and how they are being addressed.
• The initial treatment plan identifies the work to be done.
• Subsequent treatment plans identify
• what is currently being done
• what has recently been achieved,
• work and services planned for the future.
• By defining goals and objectives which can be monitored, the treatment p