You Want Me to do What?
Spending time with your clients prior to creating their supervision plan is crucial to their success, yet in a recent CorrectTech survey, only 40% of community based corrections professionals reported including the client in the process of creating their supervision or treatment plan. That means that the other 60% of supervising agents or agencies focus on creating a plan based on a formula (what is required, what they think will work, etc.) not necessarily on the individual client.
I have a friend who has struggled with her weight for, well, ever since I met her more than 20 years ago. She has been to every gym, tried every diet, given in to every fad and all of her efforts have been short lived. She has never been able to maintain her weight loss and in some cases she ends up being a bit worse off than where she started. Because I am a good friend and want to help, I have always tried to come up with some suggestions based on what has worked for me or other people I know. My well-intentioned suggestions are almost always met with something that sounds like, “I have already tried that” or “that won’t work for me.”
Kale or Case Plans
Recently I was listening to a news report on The Biggest Loser and how several of their contestants, and in some cases their season winners, had regained the weight within a year of completing the show. It sounded depressingly familiar and made me want to figure out what the missing link was. Then it struck me – The Biggest Loser weight loss plan is a formula that when applied as designed works incredibly well for many people in specific situations. The problem is that when the specific situations required for the formula to work are lost (like returning home after being at the Biggest Loser facility), the whole plan comes crumbling down. This made sense for my friend. She applied many different formulas to her life but when it came down to sticking with what she was being told to do, the formula crumbled.
Before you run out and call me a formula hater, consider this: could it be that formulas are better suited for math equations and computers than for people? Could it be that when it comes to humans, a proven system is only as effective as its weakest link and its existence in the specific situation or environment that it requires? As I considered the next steps for my friend and her weight loss journey I began thinking about our clients and how their journey is similar in many ways.
For many different reasons, the correctional system is adept at creating one size fits all systems to ensure that liability is addressed, treatment is received, restitution is paid and time is completed before exiting the system. The demands on our time are so vast, our caseloads are so high and success can be so seemingly elusive that we stick to what we know – what the clients are required to do in order to complete their sentence.
Create Change with Clients, not for Clients
What is often missed with our clients, and I would argue with my friend and the Biggest Loser contestants, is a plan that addresses individual needs, motivations, and hopes in addition to any requirements that need to be completed. What if my friend doesn’t want to run, or doesn’t like to eat kale – aren’t there other options? Yes, but the only way you would know about that is to sit down and talk to her about what she has tried, what has and hasn’t worked and why, and what she is motivated to try at this time. A plan without these key ingredients will likely not succeed. To be successful, the plan should be created with her, not for her. After all, she is the one who will be doing the work towards making a change. Working the change process with our clients in the community corrections field is no different.
I know this takes more effort and energy, but the reality is that talking to people about the change process, what they are willing to do, what they want to do, and how they think they would be best in getting there is worth the time and investment. By engaging in this process you not only help clients feel heard but you also allow them to take control of their own change process. No one likes being told what to do and we can quickly feel misunderstood, and blame our resistance on others, if our feelings and perceptions, wants and desires, are not taken into account. In addition, owning our change process supports its permanence in our life.
Give Your Clients a Say
Incorporating what the client wants related to their change process into their plan not only helps with buy-in but also with your ability to understand and adapt to where they are. For instance, we often send clients to treatment that they don’t feel like they need, or don’t want to attend. While there isn’t much we can do about sending them, as it is often a requirement by the courts, there is a whole lot that we can do to help clients prepare for their experience and try to get the most out of it. Spend time talking to your clients about why they don’t want to go to treatment, how it may benefit them, and how they can use it in their future. Also, if a client is resistant, consider including a focus area on their plan that they are really invested in (for me this is generally around employment, finances, and/or family) so that their voice and desires are included. While going to treatment may still be frustrating for them, people generally feel better when they have a say in at least a few pieces of their process. Keep in mind that success breeds success and if you begin the change process respecting the clients’ values and motivations, they will eventually learn to like things like jogging and kale. This is an important point because sometimes change requires that you do some things that you don't want to. After all, if you want to lose weight you are going to have to eat less or differently or both no matter what your values and motivations are. This is also true with EBP implementation – the more inclusive and collaborative you can be in the process of developing an implementation plan the more smoothly the process will be.
Another major reason why the client isn’t always included in the supervision/treatment plan development process has to do with the amount of time that it takes for already overloaded staff of community corrections programs. There is no way around this simple fact: collaborating with your clients on their individualized plans takes more time than simply writing it yourself. The question for me would be what is best in regards to long-term outcomes for your clients? I say break your system, throw out the formula, and think about what your friend, who has tried everything with limited success, would want someone to do to help him/her change.
Does Your Case Management System Support Your EBP efforts?
When developing our community corrections case management software, the CorrectTech developers, guided by our evidence based practices and experiences, wanted to make sure it fit the needs of the case manager, the client and the “program analyst.” For the client and case manager, case plans are individualized and linked to assessed criminogenic factors. In addition, the case manager has a tool that allows for incremental progress steps and “small wins” to be noted along the way. For the program analyst, all case plans and their resulting outcomes are fully digital for enabling better decision making about what works based on their own data.
Why does any of this matter? Well, with each client’s case plan being the backbone of your attempt for them to rehabilitate, recover and become productive members of society – it matters. Over time developing a database of fully digital case plans, your staff can learn a lot about what is working and what can be improved, enabling them to become creative problem solvers in how they approach each new client.
Want to learn more about how our case plan software helps community corrections professionals like you? Watch our Case Planning Module video below.
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About the AuthorAlexandra WalkerAlexandra Walker is the Director of Programs for CorrectTech. She has a background in corrections, training/education, implementation science, and substance use and mental health treatment. She has been a mental health clinician, research associate, college adjunct instructor, trainer, consultant, program director for a community-corrections based re-entry and education program, as well as the Interagency Criminal Justice Specialist for the Division of Criminal Justice in Colorado. Alex is currently ABD, and is assertively working on her PhD in Sociology from Colorado State University (CSU). She has been involved with several collaborative research projects with CSU including an evaluation of the reentry services provided by the Colorado Department of Corrections... READ MORE |
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