Latest / Next Level Play Therapy: A Podcast for Play Therapy Excellence / Clinical Decision-Making in Play Therapy: What’s in Your Toolbox?

Transcript

Clinical Decision-Making in Play Therapy: What’s in Your Toolbox? · Next Level Play Therapy: A Podcast for Play Therapy Excellence

• 0:02
  Cathi Spooner: Welcome to Next Level Play Therapy, a weekly podcast dedicated to supporting the next generation of child and adolescent therapists to provide exceptional play therapy services.
• 0:14
  Cathi Spooner: We'll explore all things play therapy to elevate your work with children and adolescents using the therapeutic powers of play.
• 0:23
  Cathi Spooner: I'll discuss practical tips and ideas, so you can provide a transformative experience for your young clients and make a real difference in their lives.
• 0:34
  Cathi Spooner: So get ready to take your play therapy skills to the next level and make a lasting impact in the lives of children, adolescents, and families.
• 0:47
  Cathi Spooner: Hello.
• 0:48
  Cathi Spooner: Hello.
• 0:50
  Cathi Spooner: So today I want to talk about clinical decision making in the play therapy process as it relates specifically to what kind of tools, using the metaphor of toolbox, what kind of tools are in your toolbox?
• 1:06
  Cathi Spooner: So what are your theoretical models that you're using?
• 1:09
  Cathi Spooner: How are you applying those?
• 1:11
  Cathi Spooner: What age you're working with?
• 1:12
  Cathi Spooner: What presenting of issues you're working with?
• 1:15
  Cathi Spooner: And how are you using those tools with the different clients in your, um, on your caseload that you're working with?
• 1:24
  Cathi Spooner: Because you want to make sure that you're individualizing and conceptualizing what's going on with your client and how those tools are applied.
• 1:33
  Cathi Spooner: So if you're joining me live, go ahead and post your name in the comments.
• 1:38
  Cathi Spooner: Let's see who's here.
• 1:39
  Cathi Spooner: Where are you from?
• 1:41
  Cathi Spooner: What's going on?
• 1:43
  Cathi Spooner: Who's joining today?
• 1:43
  Cathi Spooner: If you're watching live, go ahead and post your name.
• 1:47
  Cathi Spooner: And where you're from in the comments, I'd love to hear from you and let's get started for today.
• 1:54
  Cathi Spooner: So if, if this is your first time joining me, I'm Cathi Spooner.
• 1:58
  Cathi Spooner: I'm a licensed clinical social worker, registered play therapist supervisor, and I've got almost 30 years in the mental health profession, working with children, adolescents, and families.
• 2:10
  Cathi Spooner: And I love using play therapy and expressive arts with my child and adolescent clients and their families.
• 2:17
  Cathi Spooner: Because I, I really do believe that it is the most effective way to meet their unique developmental needs in the treatment process.
• 2:27
  Cathi Spooner: And here's the thing, Play therapy is more than just pulling out games and toys and pulling out art supplies.
• 2:38
  Cathi Spooner: And that's a little bit what we're going to talk about today is what makes it a little bit different based on your clinical decision making and the tools in your toolbox.
• 2:49
  Cathi Spooner: Because when you're using play therapy and expressive arts with children and adolescents, you're, you're using you're not using an adult theoretical model, you're looking at it more and from a developmental framework of child and adolescent development.
• 3:08
  Cathi Spooner: And applying those types of interventions based on the theory and how that theory is geared towards your child and adolescent clients.
• 3:21
  Cathi Spooner: So it, so it really is more than just pulling out toys and art supplies.
• 3:28
  Cathi Spooner: And I really think that's an important point and because I mean, I remember I was introduced to play therapy back, back in the 80s when I was a special education teacher and the school psychologist and the school social worker were using this thing called play therapy, this is like back in the mid to late 80s.
• 3:48
  Cathi Spooner: And they would pull me in and show me what they were doing with blocks and I would look at it.
• 3:53
  Cathi Spooner: I was in my mid twenties thinking I, they seem really excited.
• 3:57
  Cathi Spooner: I have no idea what they're doing.
• 3:59
  Cathi Spooner: Um, but I also ended up doing group with the school psychologist using play therapy application with my class.
• 4:11
  Cathi Spooner: And I absolutely got to experience the difference that it made for my kids and the difference that it made for their relationship with me as a special education teacher of children who have behavioral problems.
• 4:25
  Cathi Spooner: So think about it.
• 4:26
  Cathi Spooner: What's a special ed teacher with behavior back in the 80s, we did a lot of behavior modification.
• 4:32
  Cathi Spooner: It was all about behavior behavior behavior Well, from a kid's point of view, grownups rule the world, so how nice through the play therapy process to give them that space to work out whatever they need to work out, including grownups rule the world and I don't have any power.
• 4:54
  Cathi Spooner: And in play therapy, they get to have power.
• 4:58
  Cathi Spooner: And just seeing how that changed my relationship with the kids in my classroom, I was hooked at that point.
• 5:06
  Cathi Spooner: The thing is, though, this remind, um, like this was before the internet, so it was really hard to find trainings and things like that.
• 5:16
  Cathi Spooner: Once I got my master's degree in social work, I had no idea where to find play therapy, so I was just kind of winging it.
• 5:25
  Cathi Spooner: And it, I'll be honest, it felt horrible.
• 5:27
  Cathi Spooner: Because I didn't really know what was going on with my clients.
• 5:32
  Cathi Spooner: I didn't have a theory model that I was using.
• 5:34
  Cathi Spooner: I was using games and I was using art supplies and I really didn't know what I was doing.
• 5:40
  Cathi Spooner: Um, and I knew there was a better way.
• 5:42
  Cathi Spooner: So eventually I was able to find that, so there is a difference.
• 5:46
  Cathi Spooner: And for me, one of the things that I'm really passionate about is helping child and adolescent psychotherapists really understand play therapy and integrating expressive arts and using it effectively.
• 6:03
  Cathi Spooner: And that includes our clinical decision making process.
• 6:08
  Cathi Spooner: And what most of us will use an integrated approach.
• 6:12
  Cathi Spooner: So I call it the tools in my toolbox, so to speak.
• 6:16
  Cathi Spooner: Um, so most of us will use an integrated approach.
• 6:19
  Cathi Spooner: We still need to use that clinical decision making process with whatever it is that's going on with our clients and the interventions that we're using to help them.
• 6:32
  Cathi Spooner: I always say to the people that I supervise and my clients actually and their parents, my job is to work myself out of a job.
• 6:40
  Cathi Spooner: Meaning my job is to help you, my clients, help your clients really, um, resolve whatever it is that's going on for them to help them successfully discharge from treatment, to graduate from treatment.
• 7:00
  Cathi Spooner: That's the goal.
• 7:01
  Cathi Spooner: The goal is they're not going to stay with me forever.
• 7:03
  Cathi Spooner: So I need to use a framework and a clinical decision making process to help them get from the beginning of the treatment through the middle of treatment, which is where all the really hard work happens, to successfully completing treatment.
• 7:21
  Cathi Spooner: So FYI, full disclosure, my dogs are in the room with me today.
• 7:27
  Cathi Spooner: So if you, I can already hear them.
• 7:29
  Cathi Spooner: If you hear weird digging and just weird noises, that's my dogs.
• 7:35
  Cathi Spooner: They're already making weird snorting noises in the background.
• 7:39
  Cathi Spooner: So anyway, that's my dogs.
• 7:41
  Cathi Spooner: Um, so anyway, so, so that's what we're going to talk about today.
• 7:47
  Cathi Spooner: We're going to talk about using strong clinical decision making with the tools in your toolbox.
• 7:55
  Cathi Spooner: Because the clinical decision making process helps you answer questions like, is this model a good, is this play therapy model or expressive arts model?
• 8:05
  Cathi Spooner: Is this a good fit for my client?
• 8:08
  Cathi Spooner: How does this model, uh, apply or use that therapeutic relationship in the treatment process?
• 8:16
  Cathi Spooner: Because that may vary based on your clinical model that you're using.
• 8:22
  Cathi Spooner: Um, and then also how does that model fit with the age and developmental issues that my, the developmental stage where my client is right now.
• 8:33
  Cathi Spooner: So those are the things that you want to think about with clinical decision making.
• 8:38
  Cathi Spooner: when you're figuring out what tool to use.
• 8:41
  Cathi Spooner: So first and foremost, if you're here and you're joining me live, go ahead and post your name and, uh, where you work in the comments.
• 8:51
  Cathi Spooner: What theoretical models do you use?
• 8:54
  Cathi Spooner: If you're working with play, uh, with children and adolescents, if you've not yet been trained in using play therapy and expressive arts, have you been introduced to it?
• 9:05
  Cathi Spooner: Have you tried using Play Therapy and Expressive Arts?
• 9:08
  Cathi Spooner: How has that gone?
• 9:10
  Cathi Spooner: So post those in the comments below.
• 9:13
  Cathi Spooner: Alrighty.
• 9:14
  Cathi Spooner: So first and foremost, I always say to people, this to me is a huge part of that clinical decision making process with Play Therapy and Expressive Arts theory drives application.
• 9:29
  Cathi Spooner: So remember the play therapy process uses those therapeutic powers of play.
• 9:36
  Cathi Spooner: And based on the theory model will determine how those therapeutic powers of play that is a mouthful I feel like that's a tongue twister therapeutic powers of play say that 20 times That'll be funny How does that theoretical model use and apply those theoretical powers of play.
• 10:00
  Cathi Spooner: Depending on what theory model you are using, it may be, uh, applied differently.
• 10:07
  Cathi Spooner: So the tools in your toolbox are going to have a theoretical application to them.
• 10:14
  Cathi Spooner: So you want, even when you're using an integrated approach, you want to make sure you understand the underlying.
• 10:22
  Cathi Spooner: theoretical principles of that model so that you can make sure that it meets the needs of your clients.
• 10:32
  Cathi Spooner: So, and, uh, fits the presenting issues that they're coming to you for.
• 10:38
  Cathi Spooner: It meets their developmental stage.
• 10:41
  Cathi Spooner: It meets their age.
• 10:43
  Cathi Spooner: You want to consider all of those kinds of things when you're integrating.
• 10:46
  Cathi Spooner: And I may, I may use a couple of different theoretical models in one play therapy session, depending on what my client is doing.
• 10:57
  Cathi Spooner: And, but when I, when I do that, I also want to make sure when I've made that shift that I'm applying it, uh, applying that intervention based on whatever model that I'm using.
• 11:13
  Cathi Spooner: The other thing is though, here's the thing.
• 11:15
  Cathi Spooner: We need, we, we need the theoretical model because theory drives application equally as important.
• 11:23
  Cathi Spooner: One is.
• 11:24
  Cathi Spooner: One is not necessarily more important than the other, although you may be heavier on one and and maybe not as good on the other, so you're always going to want to be balancing that out.
• 11:37
  Cathi Spooner: Therapeutic relationship.
• 11:39
  Cathi Spooner: I really like to use an attachment kind of framework when I'm thinking about the interventions that I'm using.
• 11:47
  Cathi Spooner: And what I mean by that with an attachment framework, I, I want to make sure that I'm tuning into my clients.
• 11:57
  Cathi Spooner: And the reason that I want to tune in is because I want to get a sense of my client's response to the intervention.
• 12:07
  Cathi Spooner: So I want to, in order to do that, I have to get a sense of my client, their personality, how anxious or not anxious they are, or do they engage right away and get started, or they take a little more time to warm up.
• 12:24
  Cathi Spooner: Because that, that theoretical relationship first and foremost needs to establish the a sense of safety and security in the therapeutic relationship in the therapy room.
• 12:38
  Cathi Spooner: Because if we take, um, think about it from a neuroscience standpoint, we know that children can't, actually people, can't really engage in the, uh, play process unless their social engagement system is activated.
• 12:59
  Cathi Spooner: In order for their social engagement system to be activated, their safety, I mean, their threat circuits need to be deactivated.
• 13:09
  Cathi Spooner: That's the Polly Vagel, Stephen Porges, um, neuroception.
• 13:15
  Cathi Spooner: So in order for my client to engage in play, they have to first feel safe.
• 13:22
  Cathi Spooner: Otherwise, they won't be able to engage.
• 13:24
  Cathi Spooner: And you'll see that if you're tuned into your clients, you're going to see, see that how they respond to you, how far away they are, how close they are how they are engaging and using the interventions or with the toys or tools in the playroom.
• 13:44
  Cathi Spooner: You're gonna see all of that if you if you're tuned into them.
• 13:48
  Cathi Spooner: And then based on that, when you're tuned into them, then you'll get a sense of their needs in the treatment process.
• 13:57
  Cathi Spooner: That's going to help you with that clinical decision making.
• 14:00
  Cathi Spooner: You're going to get a sense of how well that the interventions are working.
• 14:05
  Cathi Spooner: Are they working or not working?
• 14:07
  Cathi Spooner: I've, we've all done this.
• 14:10
  Cathi Spooner: I mean, nobody ever does it perfectly all the time.
• 14:13
  Cathi Spooner: This is one of the things in my supervision group that I, so I have an online supervision group.
• 14:19
  Cathi Spooner: We do these all, we, we discuss these all of the time.
• 14:24
  Cathi Spooner: We'll, Uh, discuss clients will do that clinical decision making what's going on with them.
• 14:31
  Cathi Spooner: Are the interventions working?
• 14:33
  Cathi Spooner: Why or why not?
• 14:34
  Cathi Spooner: Are they using the interventions accurately?
• 14:38
  Cathi Spooner: So we have a LinkedIn user and LinkedIn user says I work in schools.
• 14:44
  Cathi Spooner: adolescence and I'm an integrative therapist.
• 14:47
  Cathi Spooner: I think most of us are.
• 14:48
  Cathi Spooner: Yeah, most of us are.
• 14:50
  Cathi Spooner: That's awesome.
• 14:51
  Cathi Spooner: Using drawing, sand tray, lyrics.
• 14:54
  Cathi Spooner: That's awesome.
• 14:57
  Cathi Spooner: That's so you, you must work in like a middle school or a high school.
• 15:01
  Cathi Spooner: That's great.
• 15:03
  Cathi Spooner: Do you have like a favorite modality that you use, um, with your clients?
• 15:10
  Cathi Spooner: Any of those?
• 15:10
  Cathi Spooner: I love using sand tray.
• 15:12
  Cathi Spooner: Those are so cool.
• 15:14
  Cathi Spooner: Um, what was I?
• 15:18
  Cathi Spooner: I mean, I got lost.
• 15:21
  Cathi Spooner: Well, which is another thing.
• 15:23
  Cathi Spooner: It happens to us in the treatment process.
• 15:26
  Cathi Spooner: If we are not doing our clinical decision making, we can get lost.
• 15:31
  Cathi Spooner: And we have to regroup, um, like I was saying in the, in my online supervision group, we'll staff cases.
• 15:39
  Cathi Spooner: And it's not uncommon that we get lost.
• 15:42
  Cathi Spooner: The thing is, if we have a framework that we're working from, then that helps us get back on track and figure out what tools are working or what tools are not working and what works best.
• 15:57
  Cathi Spooner: Like I've, I've had clients that I've worked with and I've tried, uh, an intervention and it has not worked well, so I have to, that gives me information though about my client and what's going on, and then I'll use that to help me with my clinical decision making to adjust as I go through the treatment process.
• 16:21
  Cathi Spooner: And I want to think about, so the other thing is I want to think about, um, the tool at whatever intervention I'm using, I need to consider that age of my client, the developmental stage of my client, their personality.
• 16:38
  Cathi Spooner: For example, if I am using, let's say I'm working with like a five year old.
• 16:45
  Cathi Spooner: I like to use child centered play therapy with that age because I find that it works really well with them.
• 16:54
  Cathi Spooner: Um, Cognitively, socially, emotionally, a five year old is at a much different developmental stage than let's say a nine year old.
• 17:05
  Cathi Spooner: With a nine year old, I'm probably going to do more of an integrated approach.
• 17:10
  Cathi Spooner: I'll probably start out with child centered play therapy because I really think that's an excellent way to establish a sense of safety and security in the play therapy room.
• 17:21
  Cathi Spooner: What I found though, if I'm, as I'm tuned in to my clients, pretty soon they get irritated with the child centered tracking and it begins, and if I, I find that it, when they get irritated with the process, then they, they, they don't engage so much with me and the therapeutic process.
• 17:44
  Cathi Spooner: So then I'll use that, that's my clinical decision I'll use that to switch to something different and Um, and then I'll base that on what they're presenting issues are, personality wiring, for example, if I have a really active nine year old boy, then I'm probably going to use more play based interventions, especially initially, because they're more active.
• 18:13
  Cathi Spooner: They don't involve as much talking about feelings and processing.
• 18:18
  Cathi Spooner: Although boys will do that.
• 18:20
  Cathi Spooner: Um, girls tend to get there quicker.
• 18:22
  Cathi Spooner: Not all girls do, and girls tend to more of the processing emotions, doing more art and sand tray in a different way than boys do.
• 18:36
  Cathi Spooner: And again, it's not always that way.
• 18:39
  Cathi Spooner: Sometimes it's different.
• 18:40
  Cathi Spooner: That's why you have to tune into your client and make sure that you're adjusting to whatever their needs are.
• 18:48
  Cathi Spooner: So I'll use child centered play therapy for the little ones because I think it best meets their needs.
• 18:55
  Cathi Spooner: Um, and this, again, we talk about these things in my online supervision group.
• 19:01
  Cathi Spooner: We'll talk about what interventions, we'll talk about what age, we'll talk about their personality wiring.
• 19:09
  Cathi Spooner: We, of course, we'll talk about how to integrate parents.
• 19:12
  Cathi Spooner: That's another thing, part of the clinical decision making.
• 19:15
  Cathi Spooner: And what kind of tools do you have in your toolbox for working with parents.
• 19:22
  Cathi Spooner: I think in the play therapy arena, we don't necessarily think so much about parents.
• 19:29
  Cathi Spooner: That's one of the things that I found as well.
• 19:32
  Cathi Spooner: Um, we, it's kind of my pet peeve also.
• 19:37
  Cathi Spooner: And again, I did these too in the beginning until I realized they weren't working.
• 19:42
  Cathi Spooner: And now I see it happen all the time.
• 19:45
  Cathi Spooner: And I think to myself, oh, there's a better way.
• 19:47
  Cathi Spooner: So, of course, the people in my supervision group are hearing this from me all the time, which is, um, how are you integrating parents and what, really what model are you going to use when you're integrating parents?
• 20:03
  Cathi Spooner: How often do you need to see parents?
• 20:06
  Cathi Spooner: Do you need to just meet with them once a month and do more kind of parent coaching?
• 20:11
  Cathi Spooner: Do you really need to integrate them in much more?
• 20:15
  Cathi Spooner: And there's a lot of research that says more parental involvement and engaging parents in the treatment process.
• 20:22
  Cathi Spooner: Children and adolescents have better treatment outcomes.
• 20:27
  Cathi Spooner: And I'm not a fan of, I call them drive through parent sessions or drive.
• 20:33
  Cathi Spooner: Um, at the end, we walk the child out, we spend, we think we're going to like check in with parents, like five minutes in the waiting room.
• 20:41
  Cathi Spooner: Which one, we're talking about things that may or may not be helpful to talk about in front of the child, two is in the waiting room, and three, it's not, it's never five minutes.
• 20:52
  Cathi Spooner: It's always more than five minutes.
• 20:54
  Cathi Spooner: And we really need a dedicated time to have parents come in where we can, we can really, um, talk about what's going on, give feedback, get feedback from parents, form that therapeutic rapport with parents.
• 21:12
  Cathi Spooner: They are the therapeutic agents of change.
• 21:15
  Cathi Spooner: The child's not the therapeutic agent of change.
• 21:18
  Cathi Spooner: They are not going to drive the change process.
• 21:22
  Cathi Spooner: Parents are going to drive the change process.
• 21:24
  Cathi Spooner: So we need to think about clinically how we're going to involve parents in the treatment process.
• 21:32
  Cathi Spooner: We talk a lot about that in my supervision group as well.
• 21:35
  Cathi Spooner: And a lot of the trainings that I do, um, We talk about how are you integrating parents into the play therapy process.
• 21:45
  Cathi Spooner: In fact, I have a specific training on that.
• 21:47
  Cathi Spooner: I haven't done for a while that this has come up so much that I'm, and people don't necessarily have a, a theoretical model or a framework in order to know what they want to do with parents.
• 22:00
  Cathi Spooner: So I'm actually thinking I may an in person training.
• 22:04
  Cathi Spooner: Online trainings are awesome.
• 22:07
  Cathi Spooner: The thing is you can't do more than two, three, maybe four max before, um, people in the training or you guys get kind of like glassy eyed as, and it's not always enough time, two or three hours to get a really, kind of really robust, thorough, solid foundation and, uh, opportunity to try things out and do that problem solving.
• 22:37
  Cathi Spooner: So I'm actually going to be starting to do some in person and, and some online as well.
• 22:44
  Cathi Spooner: Anyways, I digress.
• 22:46
  Cathi Spooner: Um, so we want to think about the age and development of the kids that we're working with and the tools that we're using for that age and development.
• 22:58
  Cathi Spooner: And then, so here's the thing, what happens if you don't use effective play therapy clinical decision making?
• 23:09
  Cathi Spooner: The thing is, and, and this is based on personal experience as well, and because I do a lot of supervision, I noticed this happens, it happens to all of us.
• 23:21
  Cathi Spooner: And to me, that's why it's important to really think about these things and course correct, so to speak, which is what happens if we're not using those strong clinical decision making skills.
• 23:34
  Cathi Spooner: We're really not as effective helping ourselves work ourselves out of a job.
• 23:41
  Cathi Spooner: Meaning we'll get lost in the process.
• 23:44
  Cathi Spooner: The strategies we're using may or may not be as effective.
• 23:50
  Cathi Spooner: If we're using an adult model and we're just pulling out toys and art supplies, what, what theory are you working out of?
• 23:58
  Cathi Spooner: Is it a child, and is it a child friendly, um, application?
• 24:04
  Cathi Spooner: What I mean by that is, developmentally, are we taking into consideration how a specific theory model is is applied based on that age and developmental stage for my client.
• 24:17
  Cathi Spooner: If we're not really accessing those therapeutic powers of play and understanding how that works and that way of being with children and adolescents from a child and adolescent framework, then are we really being effective?
• 24:35
  Cathi Spooner: Because are we using an adult model on children because we pulled out games?
• 24:41
  Cathi Spooner: And it really doesn't work that way.
• 24:44
  Cathi Spooner: There's a whole shift when we, um, are using play therapy and express arts.
• 24:51
  Cathi Spooner: Oh my God.
• 24:52
  Cathi Spooner: I can hear my dog digging in the background.
• 24:54
  Cathi Spooner: So if you hear real weird noises and panting, that's my dog, Lily.
• 24:59
  Cathi Spooner: Um, so the thing is we can get lost.
• 25:01
  Cathi Spooner: We're not going to be as effective.
• 25:04
  Cathi Spooner: Uh, and oftentimes, and the research has supported this, kids tend to drop out of treatment early.
• 25:12
  Cathi Spooner: One of my, uh, hypotheses, so to speak, it's not tested out anywhere in research that I know of, is that because we're not using the right model, we're not using a play therapy, uh, and expressive arts model with children, it's not going to be as effective and they'll tend to drop out early and they may even say therapy didn't work.
• 25:36
  Cathi Spooner: So those are kind of the things, um, that can happen if we don't really use a strong clinical decision making process with the tools in our toolbox.
• 25:50
  Cathi Spooner: And if we're not really using play therapy and expressive arts modalities in the treatment process, we're using adult model and we're pulling out toys.
• 26:03
  Cathi Spooner: So that is it for today.
• 26:05
  Cathi Spooner: Just as a recap, play therapy is more than just pulling out games, toys, and art supplies and using an adult lens to look at what's going on to help your kid, the kids that you're working with to help get them to play with you.
• 26:22
  Cathi Spooner: It really is about using the therapeutic powers of play, accessing those therapeutic powers of play.
• 26:28
  Cathi Spooner: Oh my gosh, my dog is so, I don't know if you can see Lily.
• 26:34
  Cathi Spooner: She's so loud.
• 26:36
  Cathi Spooner: It really is about accessing those therapeutic powers of play using a theoretical model and then using your clinical decision making in order to apply those, um, that using that theory tool in the application theory drives application.
• 26:54
  Cathi Spooner: And you want to think about, uh, different factors in your clinical decision making, which interventions you're going to use.
• 27:02
  Cathi Spooner: You want to think about the personality of your child, the ability for the child to feel safe, uh, how their developmental stage that they're in and adjust your tools, your interventions, your models that you're using, to meet the needs of your child or the child in your playroom.
• 27:22
  Cathi Spooner: And, um, that's going to help you.
• 27:24
  Cathi Spooner: And you want to tune in and use that therapeutic relationship to help you figure out which, which interventions are going to work with your, with your client.
• 27:36
  Cathi Spooner: Um, you're going to use that therapeutic relationship to help you see if it's working, to adjust as needed, to create that sense of safety and security in the playroom to help them engage in the play therapy process.
• 27:55
  Cathi Spooner: And then finally, um, if the thing is, if we're not using really strong clinical decision making, then we're not going to be as effective and we may risk our clients dropping out of treatment prematurely.
• 28:10
  Cathi Spooner: They may do that anyway for a variety of other factors.
• 28:15
  Cathi Spooner: Our job though, is to make sure that we're doing all that we can in order to help them get all the way through the treatment process, um, successfully.
• 28:27
  Cathi Spooner: And so if we're not using that strong clinical decision making, then we will probably get lost in the treatment process and it'll get derailed.
• 28:38
  Cathi Spooner: It may not be effective.
• 28:39
  Cathi Spooner: The interventions we choose may not be effective.
• 28:42
  Cathi Spooner: Um, so that is it for today.
• 28:46
  Cathi Spooner: Um, so that's a wrap for today.
• 28:50
  Cathi Spooner: I do want to let you know, I have one or two openings left in my online supervision group.
• 28:57
  Cathi Spooner: So if you're interested in learning play therapy and expressive arts, the online group is a really great way to do that.
• 29:06
  Cathi Spooner: You get not only my, uh, my collective, my brain, but the collective wisdom and brains of the entire group.
• 29:14
  Cathi Spooner: We share resources in there.
• 29:15
  Cathi Spooner: We do a lot of clinical decision making.
• 29:19
  Cathi Spooner: We do a lot of, um, talking about how, which interventions to use, applying those and using those effectively, engaging parents in the, in the process.
• 29:33
  Cathi Spooner: So if you're interested in that online play therapy supervision group, you can message me, you can post something in the comments here, and we can set up a video call just to make sure the group is a good fit for you.
• 29:48
  Cathi Spooner: The other thing is post in the comments, what tools, that you use with your child and adolescent clients and, uh, in the post, let's see which ones you use, what age clients you work with, um, what theoretical models do you use with play therapy and expressive arts.
• 30:09
  Cathi Spooner: So that is it for today and I will see you next time.
• 30:13
  Cathi Spooner: Bye.
• 30:16
  Cathi Spooner: Thank you for joining me on this episode of Next Level Play Therapy.
• 30:20
  Cathi Spooner: I hope you found the discussion valuable and gained new insights and ideas to support your work helping children, adolescents, and families heal.
• 30:30
  Cathi Spooner: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review.
• 30:35
  Cathi Spooner: Your feedback helps to improve and reach more people who can benefit from this information.
• 30:41
  Cathi Spooner: Remember, Play therapy is a powerful tool for healing and growth.
• 30:46
  Cathi Spooner: Whether you're a new play therapist or experienced, I encourage you to continue your learning journey to unlock the potential of play in your own work and relationships.
• 30:57
  Cathi Spooner: If you have any questions or topic suggestions for future episodes, I'd love to hear from you.
• 31:04
  Cathi Spooner: Connect with me on social media and visit my website at Renewing Hearts Play Therapy Training to stay updated on upcoming episodes, trainings, and resources.
• 31:17
  Cathi Spooner: Thank you once again for listening to Next Level Play Therapy.
• 31:20
  Cathi Spooner: Until next time, keep playing, learning, and growing.