Course Description 19

If a monitor came to do a chart review of the case records of the individuals receiving services at many treatment programs throughout the country, what would he or she see on the treatment plans of those being served? Would it be possible, without a name on the chart, to differentiate one consumer of services from the next? Do goals and objectives stated in the plan reflect the counselor’s goals or those of the consumer/client? If you answered the former, you are in the majority. “Come daily for medication, see the clinician once a week for individuals, 90 meetings in 90 days, etc., etc., etc.” sound very much like the clinician’s goals and probably don’t reflect those of the client who has career, family and other personal dreams and aspirations. When you add culture/ethnicity and spirituality to the mix, the task of creating a person-centered recovery plan may seem daunting for the clinician attempting to juggle managed care, record-keeping and the myriad of program policies and procedures by which he or she is bound. However, once the onus for the creation of a Recovery Plan is put back on the client/consumer, the load actually becomes lessened. The clinician is no longer responsible for the creation of it, for implementing it, or for insuring it is done. We will discuss in this course just how that is possible.

Consumers of behavioral health services, when asked, say that they want to assume control over the treatment they receive. They want their wishes, hopes and dreams reflected in their Recovery Plans. They want to be able to choose and change service providers and to do so without threat of retaliation or coercion. They want to have their achievements celebrated and they want to be encouraged to take risks. They want to be listened to. These goals are not different than those we all set for ourselves daily. It should be no different in the treatment setting.

There is an underlying fear in many clinicians/counselors that Person-centered Planning and a recovery-centered approach in general is somehow a threat; to jobs, to stability, to the field as a whole. This could not be further from the truth. The notion that a client/consumer’s individual and very personal wishes, hopes and dreams should be reflected in their Recovery Plan and followed represents a paradigm shift, especially for those who have been in the field for a while. Recently, a psychologist colleague of mine said it really well when he said, “We took the clients and the staff out of the State hospitals. Now, we need to take the State hospitals out of the clients and the staff.”

This course will present an in-depth look at a recovery-centered approach and Recovery Core Values and how these may be employed in clinical practice in Mental Health and Chemical Dependency Treatment. Issues such as understanding how culture and spirituality should be used in the development of person-centered recovery planning will be explored. This workshop will use a selected reading list and experiential exercises and participants will be asked to examine themselves and their world view as well as that of others in order to understand recovery in a cultural/spiritual context.

This five week course requires 10 hours of work over its duration.

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