Latest / Next Level Play Therapy: A Podcast for Play Therapy Excellence / What is Best Practice in Play Therapy Clinical Decision-Making

Transcript

What is Best Practice in Play Therapy Clinical Decision-Making · Next Level Play Therapy: A Podcast for Play Therapy Excellence

• 0:02
  Cathi Spooner: Welcome to Next Level Play Therapy.
• 0:04
  Cathi Spooner: 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.
• 0:33
  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.
• 0:48
  Cathi Spooner: Hey there.
• 0:48
  Cathi Spooner: Good morning.
• 0:50
  Cathi Spooner: So today I wanna talk about, um, what the research is saying.
• 0:57
  Cathi Spooner: One of the things that I like to do when I am working on creating a course, and I'm pulling a course together these days on case conceptualization in play therapy, which to my, in my mind also includes clinical decision making.
• 1:14
  Cathi Spooner: So one of the things that I like to do when I'm pulling together a new course is to go through and look at what the current research says.
• 1:22
  Cathi Spooner: And so I ran across this study and what took, what, what struck me about the study is that it was using clinical decision making regarding mental health treatment for children.
• 1:38
  Cathi Spooner: And it was set in community mental health settings.
• 1:42
  Cathi Spooner: Typically, community health, typically, not always for on an outpatient basis, you tend to have some of the more higher acuity families, and so in my mind, clinical decision making with some of these higher acuity families definitely requires some, uh, expertise, experience.
• 2:05
  Cathi Spooner: These, they, they can be challenging.
• 2:07
  Cathi Spooner: I work in, uh, over the years, have worked in community mental health and some of the more, uh, like residential treatment and working in homeless shelters.
• 2:21
  Cathi Spooner: So in my mind, when we're using play therapy, it would be really good to know what the research says about clinical decision making.
• 2:32
  Cathi Spooner: And so in the last couple of livestream episodes, like last week and the week before, I talked about what is clinical decision making?
• 2:41
  Cathi Spooner: What are, um, some of the things to keep in mind about clinical decision making and play therapy.
• 2:48
  Cathi Spooner: So if you're interested in learning more about what the heck is clinical decision making, then I would definitely recommend that you go back and, and listen to or watch some of my live replays and if so.
• 3:03
  Cathi Spooner: I stream live every week into Instagram.
• 3:08
  Cathi Spooner: I live stream into my Facebook group for child adolescent therapists using play an expressive arts therapy.
• 3:18
  Cathi Spooner: If you're interested in that group and you're on Facebook.
• 3:21
  Cathi Spooner: Um, and you meet that criteria, that group is called Play and Express.
• 3:26
  Cathi Spooner: Its Play and Expressive Arts, Therapy Playground.
• 3:31
  Cathi Spooner: You do have to answer all the questions, like there's are several questions.
• 3:35
  Cathi Spooner: That's one of the things that people regularly don't do, so they don't get in the group.
• 3:40
  Cathi Spooner: Um, so you do have to answer all the questions.
• 3:43
  Cathi Spooner: And then I stream into my YouTube channel and also LinkedIn.
• 3:49
  Cathi Spooner: So if you're on Instagram and you wanna watch some of the replays, you can just go into my grid, I think, and you should find them all there.
• 3:58
  Cathi Spooner: In my Facebook group.
• 4:00
  Cathi Spooner: Click in the featured section, or the easiest place to find it is hop over to my YouTube channel, Cathi Spooner, Renewing Hearts Consulting, and uh, click on the live tab and then you'll see all my live streams there.
• 4:16
  Cathi Spooner: But the last couple weeks I have talked about clinical decision making.
• 4:20
  Cathi Spooner: And so if you wanna know more about that, you can hop over there and watch the replays.
• 4:25
  Cathi Spooner: So I'm Cathi Spooner.
• 4:27
  Cathi Spooner: I'm a licensed clinical social worker and a registered play therapist supervisor here in the United States with over 30 years experience working with children, adolescents, and families.
• 4:39
  Cathi Spooner: And I love using play therapy and expressive arts play therapy.
• 4:44
  Cathi Spooner: I use expressive arts uh, with a play therapy lens.
• 4:49
  Cathi Spooner: And so I find that's a really, really effective way to engage children, especially family play therapy.
• 4:57
  Cathi Spooner: It's a really effective way to get siblings of different developmental stages to engage in the, in the change process and have parents in there, caregivers.
• 5:11
  Cathi Spooner: So, um, today what I do wanna talk about is this study that I ran across and I'll post a link in the con, I'll not the link, I'll post the study citation.
• 5:26
  Cathi Spooner: So those of you who have access to university libraries.
• 5:32
  Cathi Spooner: If you wanna check it out, you can check it out.
• 5:35
  Cathi Spooner: So the name of the study is Clinical Decision Making and Community Children's Mental Health, using innovative methods to compare Clinicians with and without training in evidence-based treatment.
• 5:51
  Cathi Spooner: I have my notes, I have to read that off my notes.
• 5:53
  Cathi Spooner: Um, and so what, so the purpose of this study is, what was, um, they wanted to look at kind of looking at some of the gaps in quality mental health services for children because one of the things that they found is through, through the current data is there's not a lot of really good access to evidence-based treatment or, um, quality treatment for children that's gonna help them overcome whatever mental health challenges they're experiencing.
• 6:34
  Cathi Spooner: And to me, this is especially important.
• 6:37
  Cathi Spooner: Even post pandemic because what we're finding in children's mental health and adolescent mental health is that children and adolescents and families are still struggling.
• 6:48
  Cathi Spooner: Um, so, access to good quality mental health care for children is really important, and if you live in an area where access to mental health services is kind of limited, then what we're even finding now is trying to figure out ways to get quality mental health services to children in those more rural areas or areas where there isn't a lot of good access.
• 7:22
  Cathi Spooner: And so for that reason, I thought, well, it would be good to look at what the research says about clinical decision making.
• 7:31
  Cathi Spooner: I have not found, I haven't found any information in the play therapy arena about clinical decision making.
• 7:40
  Cathi Spooner: I think sometimes it, um, kind of gets in there, um, without necessarily talking about it directly.
• 7:49
  Cathi Spooner: I think whenever you're learning a specific play therapy model, part of what you're learning is how do you, especially, you get the training and then you have the supervision or the consultation.
• 8:01
  Cathi Spooner: I think a lot of what good consultation will do is help you take that theory, that play therapy theory, and how are you going to use your clinical decision making to apply the theory for each of your clients.
• 8:18
  Cathi Spooner: 'Cause they're gonna be different nuances and you're gonna be hitting kind of different barriers, sometimes a little roadblocks.
• 8:26
  Cathi Spooner: Roadblocks.
• 8:27
  Cathi Spooner: How do you navigate through that?
• 8:29
  Cathi Spooner: And so.
• 8:31
  Cathi Spooner: I don't think we necessarily directly talk about clinical decision making in and of itself.
• 8:36
  Cathi Spooner: And so when I found this research, I got really excited.
• 8:40
  Cathi Spooner: Um, and so in this, I'm gonna read a quote.
• 8:43
  Cathi Spooner: This is the research.
• 8:44
  Cathi Spooner: It's actually a lot of pages, so I wanna read a quote from the study about kind of the overview of what this study was trying to accomplish and the issues that they were trying to address.
• 9:00
  Cathi Spooner: So the authors say to compliment, so what they're talking about is evidence-based treatment.
• 9:05
  Cathi Spooner: What the, what these researchers did is they, they were wanting to compare the quality of, uh, clinical decision making in clinicians who had been trained in evidence-based therapy versus clinicians who had not been claimed in evide, uh, who have not been trained in evidence-based treatment.
• 9:32
  Cathi Spooner: And to me this is relevant for play therapy because there are play therapy models that are considered evidence-based.
• 9:41
  Cathi Spooner: And the other thing is that play therapy is based in theory.
• 9:48
  Cathi Spooner: And the theory dictates how you're gonna help your clients access those therapeutic powers of play.
• 9:54
  Cathi Spooner: And so it's, it's grounded in theory.
• 9:57
  Cathi Spooner: And then you have to do your clinical decision making about how you are going to apply and implement the theory with each one of your clients and within their family context.
• 10:09
  Cathi Spooner: And so maybe not every single play therapy model is considered evidence-based treatment by samhsa, but they're all grounded in a theoretical model and the model that takes how you're going to apply the theory.
• 10:28
  Cathi Spooner: So I thought it was, I thought it was relevant for play therapy, the play therapy community to think about clinical decision making.
• 10:38
  Cathi Spooner: And if you and child and adolescent mental health therapist, so maybe you don't consider yourself a play therapist.
• 10:45
  Cathi Spooner: And so we're looking at even if, like what evidence-based models are you using that are geared towards children?
• 10:54
  Cathi Spooner: Um, so here's the quote and, um, to compliment the individual treatment protocol training model, some reachers researchers propose greater attention to a trans treatment model and suggesting that empirically supported treatments share identifiable elements across several different protocols.
• 11:20
  Cathi Spooner: So I kind of looked at this as, um, so I love using attachment theory.
• 11:28
  Cathi Spooner: There are lots of different attachment theory models that you can use with children and children and their parents.
• 11:37
  Cathi Spooner: If you're using attachment theory there are a lot of similar elements across all the attachment models.
• 11:44
  Cathi Spooner: They're gonna kind of, I call it, package 'em a little differently and then apply them even in play therapy, there are lots of similar elements in the play therapy, um, in, in play therapy models and then they're just kind of utilized differently.
• 12:02
  Cathi Spooner: So, so what this is talking about, the way that I read it is there are similarities across all of these different ev evidence-based models, and so they were proposing kind of doing more of like a trans treatment, um, protocol, which, you know, in any of us in the mental health, like most of us use an integrated approach.
• 12:25
  Cathi Spooner: So in my mind this was kind of even more interesting, um, the idea of using clinical decision making, if you're using more of an integrated approach, how do you look at some of those common elements across all the different play therapy models?
• 12:45
  Cathi Spooner: And so here's what they said.
• 12:47
  Cathi Spooner: A major commo component of the common elements approach is the use of clinical decision making, and I a hundred percent agree with that, which involves the use of an algorithm type approach to guide decisions.
• 13:01
  Cathi Spooner: So basically you are kind of, using like decision trees in your head, well if this happens and I go this way, or if this happens, I need to try this way.
• 13:11
  Cathi Spooner: And they're all gonna be based on whatever your theoretical model is that you're using.
• 13:16
  Cathi Spooner: So one of the things that, that some of the researchers are talking about and maybe something to think about, I think, um.
• 13:25
  Cathi Spooner: Um, the article brings up, the research study brings up is using those common elements to do your clinical decision making and what would quality decision making look like.
• 13:41
  Cathi Spooner: Excuse me.
• 13:43
  Cathi Spooner: All right.
• 13:43
  Cathi Spooner: So this type of clinical skill development may involve the growth of metacognitive skills involved in clinical decis decision making and that, and that can be used across problem areas to improve the effectiveness of treatment while reducing training demands.
• 14:06
  Cathi Spooner: With the larger evidence-based framework, clinical decision making plays a crucial role.
• 14:13
  Cathi Spooner: And I would 100% agree with that.
• 14:18
  Cathi Spooner: Because evidence-based treatment is grounded in a theoretical model.
• 14:24
  Cathi Spooner: And then that model is gonna require decision making to help you determine how you're going to apply it.
• 14:32
  Cathi Spooner: So I thought this was really, really interesting research.
• 14:37
  Cathi Spooner: Um, and so what the, so the results of the study, so in this study, let me back up a little bit.
• 14:45
  Cathi Spooner: So in this study, they took 48 clinicians.
• 14:51
  Cathi Spooner: And they divided them into two groups.
• 14:53
  Cathi Spooner: There were, there were 14 clinicians who were in the evidence-based treatment trained, uh, group, and then 34 were in the non evidence-based treatment trained group.
• 15:06
  Cathi Spooner: And so the way that the research worked was they were given, each of the clinicians in both groups were given the same case vignettes.
• 15:16
  Cathi Spooner: Um, the case vignettes were about children with disruptive behavior, and the therapists had to verbalize their so out loud, they had to verbalize their clinical decision making process and their treatment.
• 15:33
  Cathi Spooner: Uh, their treatment planning.
• 15:35
  Cathi Spooner: So what we know is, um, when we're using case conceptualization, we're also using clinical decision making.
• 15:44
  Cathi Spooner: And if you're interested in learning more about case conceptualization in play therapy, that was a few live stream episodes before as well, so you may wanna go hop over easiest places to hop over to my YouTube channel, and you should be able to find them there in the live tab.
• 16:02
  Cathi Spooner: If you're in my Facebook group, you can find them in the featured section.
• 16:08
  Cathi Spooner: So what they did was they had the, so what we know is clinical decision making is important in the, in the case conceptualization process.
• 16:19
  Cathi Spooner: And part of that is treatment planning.
• 16:22
  Cathi Spooner: Like I'm doing treatment formulation, I take this information and I use it to help me develop my plan of action for treatment.
• 16:32
  Cathi Spooner: But we also know as clinicians in the mental health field that we are doing clinical decision making all and a bit of, and we're using that to kind of, um, navigate our case conceptualization from beginning to end of treatment.
• 16:50
  Cathi Spooner: So again, clinical decision making and our ability to use quality decision making is really important for the treatment outcomes that you get.
• 17:01
  Cathi Spooner: And so that's what the study was focused on.
• 17:04
  Cathi Spooner: The, they used what they call, there's a naturalist natural naturalistic decision making theory, and they used that theory, the coder, uh, the researchers used that theory to code the verbalizations and the decision making process.
• 17:26
  Cathi Spooner: And essentially this naturalistic decision making theory is focused on using decision making more in a realistic kind of real world setting and looking at specific set of criteria for that decision making and how they're doing that evolving kind of dynamic, um, process to basically figure things out clinically.
• 17:56
  Cathi Spooner: And so this NMD naturalistic decision making model essentially dis differentiates expert and novice decision making based on some operationalized criteria that accesses, assesses that decision making process.
• 18:17
  Cathi Spooner: So here's what they found that, so that's a, that's the research in a nutshell.
• 18:21
  Cathi Spooner: And it was kind of quasi experimental.
• 18:23
  Cathi Spooner: If you're into those things, you wanna know those things.
• 18:27
  Cathi Spooner: Um.
• 18:28
  Cathi Spooner: So here were the re results of this study, and what they found was that evidence-based trained clinicians displayed cognitive processes more closely aligned with the expert decision making than non EBT trained that non EBD, eBT evidence-based treatment approach.
• 18:54
  Cathi Spooner: They were more aligned with the expert novice decision making process.
• 19:01
  Cathi Spooner: Hey, Carla.
• 19:02
  Cathi Spooner: Carla, so glad.
• 19:03
  Cathi Spooner: Oh, that's awesome.
• 19:05
  Cathi Spooner: I'm glad you could join us.
• 19:06
  Cathi Spooner: Hey, which reminds me, I totally forgot to say, if you're watching, feel free to.
• 19:15
  Cathi Spooner: Uh, post your name.
• 19:16
  Cathi Spooner: I would actually really love to know who's here, what population you work with, um, which play therapy and expressive arts modalities that you're using, what questions you have about, uh, the decision making process and play therapy.
• 19:34
  Cathi Spooner: Feel free to post those in the comments.
• 19:38
  Cathi Spooner: Thank you, Carla.
• 19:39
  Cathi Spooner: When I saw your post, I realized, Ooh, I forgot to ask people that or tell people to do that.
• 19:43
  Cathi Spooner: Feel free to join the conversation.
• 19:47
  Cathi Spooner: So, um, the results of the study, so, so the, the clinicians who were trained in an, uh, evidence-based treatment model, their decision making was much more aligned with expert decision making quality.
• 20:05
  Cathi Spooner: And so what they found was with these EBT trained clinicians, they, they used reasoning that focused on relevant information, and their questioning was more focused when they were gathering information.
• 20:20
  Cathi Spooner: And they, they used about half the questions that the non EBT trained clinicians used because they were, they were much more focused.
• 20:32
  Cathi Spooner: And what they, they found was, uh, one of the reasons that's helpful to know is that the EBT trained clinicians tended to organize and synthesize the information more efficiently to conceptualize what the diagnosis is and what the treatment plan needed to be.
• 20:56
  Cathi Spooner: So, and there were significant variations between the EBT trained clinicians and the non EBT trained clinicians on how they attended to the information in these case vignettes and how they made decisions based on that information.
• 21:18
  Cathi Spooner: So I thought I would read out of the results.
• 21:20
  Cathi Spooner: I would read a little bit, I read a quote from the study that kind of highlights this, um, information.
• 21:27
  Cathi Spooner: So novices would be, um, uh, the, the ones that are not necessarily very proficient in doing that clinical decision making making process.
• 21:43
  Cathi Spooner: So Carla's asking, what does EBT mean?
• 21:47
  Cathi Spooner: EBT stands for evidence-based treatment.
• 21:51
  Cathi Spooner: So it's treatment that's been researched and found to be effective.
• 21:57
  Cathi Spooner: So it's got evidence behind it that it's a very effective model.
• 22:01
  Cathi Spooner: Like one of, uh, like a in play therapy, evidence-based treatment models would be child-centered play therapy.
• 22:10
  Cathi Spooner: It would be Filial Therapy, um, which is SLU the gurney version of adding parents.
• 22:18
  Cathi Spooner: The Gary Landreth version would be Child Parent Relationship Therapy.
• 22:23
  Cathi Spooner: That's another evidence-based.
• 22:25
  Cathi Spooner: Adlerian therapy play Therapy and Thera play.
• 22:29
  Cathi Spooner: Those are considered evidence-based by samhsa.
• 22:33
  Cathi Spooner: They've had a lot of research behind them.
• 22:36
  Cathi Spooner: Um, like a really common one pretty much a lot of people know is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, DBT therapy.
• 22:44
  Cathi Spooner: They've con they're considered evidence-based because there's a lot of research to back it up.
• 22:50
  Cathi Spooner: So, um, so here's my other thing about that.
• 22:53
  Cathi Spooner: Like, even in play therapy that like Gestalt play therapy or Jungian play therapy, they, at this point they probably don't have enough research, maybe because there's not enough funding for it or they don't have a big university organization behind it doing the research.
• 23:12
  Cathi Spooner: So that's kind of one of my thing.
• 23:14
  Cathi Spooner: It's nice evidence-based treatment I think it's good to know.
• 23:17
  Cathi Spooner: The other thing about that is there's some really good models out there that maybe haven't had the research, they haven't had funding or whatever, um, to kind of get that done.
• 23:28
  Cathi Spooner: That's just my little caveat and my opinion.
• 23:32
  Cathi Spooner: So here's the quote that I thought would be info, um, about the, the findings.
• 23:38
  Cathi Spooner: Novices are described as not having sufficient, sufficient knowledge and skills to discriminate between salient and non salient cues, which appear to occur with non EBT trained clinicians, based on the increased number of diagnoses and factors attended to for V vignettes that included parent and family factors.
• 24:08
  Cathi Spooner: The findings suggests that non EBT um, trained clinicians may have more difficulty organizing large amounts of information like child, parent, and family-based, given the complexity of families seeking services in community-based mental health settings, including a high frequency of multiple parent and child conte contextual risk factors.
• 24:39
  Cathi Spooner: Which is basically the meaning they have they have higher acuity families, they have FI families who have more complex.
• 24:48
  Cathi Spooner: They are.
• 24:50
  Cathi Spooner: Um, usually lots of generations of trauma addiction and attachment issues that they've been struggling with mental health through a, a few generations.
• 25:00
  Cathi Spooner: So that's higher acuity.
• 25:02
  Cathi Spooner: Hey, uh, I. I hope I pronounced your name right.
• 25:07
  Cathi Spooner: Ro Aya from South Africa.
• 25:10
  Cathi Spooner: I'm so glad you're joining us.
• 25:11
  Cathi Spooner: Thank you for breaking down the study.
• 25:13
  Cathi Spooner: So well, the study highlights and supports, again, the importance of using evidence-based practices.
• 25:19
  Cathi Spooner: I agree.
• 25:20
  Cathi Spooner: Um, and at and at least practices that are theory based and the theory apply determines how you apply it.
• 25:30
  Cathi Spooner: But the other piece is, what they're highlighting here is that training in the clinical decision making process.
• 25:37
  Cathi Spooner: 'Cause you can go to a training, you can get trained.
• 25:41
  Cathi Spooner: But the the effectiveness of the out of the treatment, and the, the quality of the outcomes is gonna based on clinician competency.
• 25:54
  Cathi Spooner: The clinician's ability to apply it, which is going to require that clinical decision making process.
• 26:01
  Cathi Spooner: It also in is gonna include your case conceptualization.
• 26:06
  Cathi Spooner: They go hand in hand.
• 26:09
  Cathi Spooner: Um, so what, what it says is, so just kind of finishing the, the quote here, A clinician's ability to meaningfully synthesize case information and create an accurate case conceptualization, including a diagnosis and treatment plan in an efficient manner can be qua critical to delivering optimal care.
• 26:34
  Cathi Spooner: And I 100% agree with that.
• 26:38
  Cathi Spooner: And I, I have, um, that's one of the things that we focus on in my, when I, any of my consultation and supervision that I do.
• 26:47
  Cathi Spooner: I think it's really important for clinicians to develop case conceptualization and clinical decision making skills.
• 26:57
  Cathi Spooner: Then that includes in play therapy.
• 26:59
  Cathi Spooner: And so I have Play Therapy Academy, which is basically we do online consultation groups couple times a month.
• 27:07
  Cathi Spooner: And then in Play Therapy Academy, I have additional trainings.
• 27:12
  Cathi Spooner: These are the ones I'm in the process of developing.
• 27:15
  Cathi Spooner: I have one out now, which is getting grounded in Play Therapy Foundations.
• 27:20
  Cathi Spooner: That's available if you're not in Play Therapy Academy, it's still available.
• 27:25
  Cathi Spooner: I'll talk a little bit more about that.
• 27:27
  Cathi Spooner: I'll talk a little bit more about play Therapy Academy as well.
• 27:30
  Cathi Spooner: But right now I'm in the process of developing these, it's called Getting Grounded in Play Therapy Excellence Skills, because what I found is in the play therapy community, we don't necessarily have a lot of training for some of these, what the research would call common elements.
• 27:52
  Cathi Spooner: Some of these elements that in play therapy that are, that are common among all the different play therapy models.
• 28:01
  Cathi Spooner: For example, clinical decision making and case conceptualization.
• 28:06
  Cathi Spooner: So your play therapy model is gonna determine how you apply it.
• 28:11
  Cathi Spooner: That being said, you still need to formulate that case conceptualization and use your clinical decision making to get all the way through the process.
• 28:21
  Cathi Spooner: Which is, you know, when I, when I do any of these courses and I'm developing them, I always like to go to the research and see what the research says and include that in the training because I think it's really important to make sure that we've got the most up-to-date information in when we're doing our trainings 'cause we're passing that along.
• 28:43
  Cathi Spooner: And so, um, to me that's really important in the, in the treatment that we're, I mean, the training that we're providing.
• 28:52
  Cathi Spooner: So I'll talk a little bit more at the end about these, these two programs.
• 28:57
  Cathi Spooner: One, which is the Play Therapy Academy, that's the consultation, which also has some training in the program.
• 29:06
  Cathi Spooner: But also if you, if you're not in Play Therapy Academy and maybe you're, you're not in need of, uh, of play therapy, supervision, consultation program, or you're already in with somebody else, uh, but you still want access to the courses, they're available as well.
• 29:24
  Cathi Spooner: So I'll, I'll talk a little bit more about that.
• 29:27
  Cathi Spooner: Um, but I do think this is important for play therapists to have these kinds of trainings to kind of hone, hone our skills.
• 29:38
  Cathi Spooner: And this, this is probably one of my superpowers'cause I love a structure.
• 29:42
  Cathi Spooner: I get lost without a structure.
• 29:44
  Cathi Spooner: And early on in my play therapy career, I realized I have got to develop a structure, a way of thinking about and, and navigating these cases, um, in order to be effective.
• 29:58
  Cathi Spooner: 'Cause the goal is for them to, um, be able to successfully complete play therapy in the shortest amount of time, getting the most optimal benefits.
• 30:10
  Cathi Spooner: That's the goal.
• 30:12
  Cathi Spooner: Um, so what does that mean for play therapy?
• 30:17
  Cathi Spooner: So I've kind of already talked about that a little bit, but here, uh, the thing is just to kind of a kind of tie in the the study with play therapy.
• 30:29
  Cathi Spooner: Play therapy has evidence-based models and they have some non-evidence based models.
• 30:34
  Cathi Spooner: The thing is, across play therapy, if you're using play therapy, you've been trained in a specific play therapy model, like child-centric play therapy or um, Adlerian play therapy, or Gestalt play therapy, or Jungian play therapy, or Filial play therapy or therapy play.
• 30:55
  Cathi Spooner: You're, you're gonna use, um.
• 30:59
  Cathi Spooner: When you're learning these models, you wanna make sure that you're learning the principles and how they're applied.
• 31:06
  Cathi Spooner: Because one of the things that I notice happens a lot, and I've been doing, um, consultation and supervision for about 15 years now.
• 31:17
  Cathi Spooner: One of the biggest things that I find happening is that clinicians are not thinking about how the model is applied.
• 31:27
  Cathi Spooner: And practicing and becoming proficient at, okay, maybe I wanna use, um, Jungian play therapy.
• 31:39
  Cathi Spooner: What is Jungian theory and how is that applied with this particular client at this particular time where they are in the treatment process?
• 31:48
  Cathi Spooner: All of that's decision making.
• 31:51
  Cathi Spooner: So e so you're basing your decision making and you're conceptualizing your treatment based on your theoretical model.
• 31:59
  Cathi Spooner: But there are still ways in which you need to go about gathering the data, using your theoretical model to understand and conceptualize the problem, figure out what the diagnoses is, and then use that for your treatment planning.
• 32:17
  Cathi Spooner: That's gonna be true across all your play therapy models, and it's important to really hone and develop your clinical decision making skills and your case conceptualization skills.
• 32:35
  Cathi Spooner: That's an important part of the process, and for that reason, that's why I came up with, and I'm developing these, these courses that I talked about in the Getting Grounded and Play therapy Foundation courses.
• 32:50
  Cathi Spooner: All the courses are gonna be self-paced.
• 32:52
  Cathi Spooner: They're gonna be online.
• 32:53
  Cathi Spooner: You could take 'em in your own time zone whenever it's convenient for you.
• 32:56
  Cathi Spooner: I wanted to make them really, really, really accessible.
• 33:00
  Cathi Spooner: So just to recap for today, um, play the study provides useful information to understand the role of quality clinical decision making when providing mental health treatment to children, adolescents and families.
• 33:18
  Cathi Spooner: And clinicians who are trained in an evidence-based model, and I, and, and I would say the evidence-based model is really about using the theoretical model.
• 33:30
  Cathi Spooner: And how does that, how does that, how do you apply that with each of your clients?
• 33:37
  Cathi Spooner: So your, your evidence, it, your model that you're using is grounded in a theory and theory drives the application, and that's the important piece.
• 33:47
  Cathi Spooner: You're not just kind of making things up from session to session, not really grounded in any kind of theoretical model and just kinda, or even if you're working with children, you're not using an adult model.
• 34:00
  Cathi Spooner: That developmentally is geared towards adults.
• 34:02
  Cathi Spooner: You're not using that with children.
• 34:06
  Cathi Spooner: And then thirdly, play therapy is based in a theoretical model that guides children's ability to access those therapeutic powers of play for healing.
• 34:18
  Cathi Spooner: So simply learning a play therapy model is not gonna be sufficient.
• 34:25
  Cathi Spooner: You've got to learn how to apply that model with each of your clients who are showing up in your practice, and that's where the clinical decision making process is really, really important.
• 34:41
  Cathi Spooner: So that is it for today.
• 34:42
  Cathi Spooner: I am so glad you were able to join.
• 34:44
  Cathi Spooner: If you're watching on the replay, I would love to know, um, your name, where, what population you work with, where you work.
• 34:52
  Cathi Spooner: So feel free to post in the replay.
• 34:55
  Cathi Spooner: I would love to know what play therapy models you are using.
• 34:59
  Cathi Spooner: So go ahead and post those in the comments as well, and I'll see you next week.
• 35:04
  Cathi Spooner: Bye.
• 35:06
  Cathi Spooner: Thank you for joining me on this episode of Next Level Play Therapy.
• 35:10
  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.
• 35:20
  Cathi Spooner: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review.
• 35:25
  Cathi Spooner: Your feedback helps to improve and reach more people who can benefit from this information.
• 35:31
  Cathi Spooner: Remember, play therapy is a powerful tool for healing and growth.
• 35:36
  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 in relationships.
• 35:47
  Cathi Spooner: If you have any questions or topics, suggestions for future episodes.
• 35:52
  Cathi Spooner: I'd love to hear from you.
• 35:54
  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.
• 36:07
  Cathi Spooner: Thank you once again for listening to Next Level Play Therapy.
• 36:10
  Cathi Spooner: Until next time, keep playing, learning and growing.