Next Level Play Therapy: A Podcast for Play Therapy Excellence

How to Write Meaningful Play Therapy Treatment Plans

• Cathi Spooner, LCSW, RPT-S • Episode 98

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If I say play therapy treatment plans, what’s the first thing that pops into your brain?


“Aaaaagh! I hate writing treatment plans! They’re just more paperwork to make insurance happy.”


“Ugh, they’re so complicated and confusing.”


“Treatment plans are pointless. I never use them and they take forever.”


“I get why we need them… but writing them for play therapy clients? Overwhelming.”


If you’re in the mental health world — even in the play therapy realm — you’ve probably thought one of these at least once. Maybe twice. Maybe last week. 😅


Here’s the twist:


 What if I told you treatment plans and treatment planning aren’t the same thing… even though they’re BFFs?


What if I told you treatment planning is the real MVP — the part that actually helps you think clinically — and 👇🏼

👉🏻 a solid play therapy treatment plan has to align with your play therapy theoretical model?


Yeah… I know.


 Your head might be screaming.


 Your eyes might be doing a full Olympic-level backflip.


Totally valid.


But I promise — this episode makes it all make so much more sense.


And because it’s the Thanksgiving holiday season, I pulled this one straight out of the vault.


 It’s an oldie but a goodie, and honestly? It hits even harder the second time around.


In this replay, I’ll walk you through how to turn that frustrating, overwhelming “writing treatment plans” chore into something that actually feels meaningful —


Something that helps you laser-focus on what’s really happening with your clients… so you can help them heal with clarity and confidence.


You’ll learn:
 ✨ Why treatment planning gives your work direction
 ✨ How your play therapy theoretical model shapes what goes into the play therapy treatment plan
 ✨ What makes a play therapy treatment plan purposeful instead of just paperwork


Impossible?


 Stick around. Let’s find out together. 🤓

Join my free Facebook Community Play and Expressive Arts Therapy Playground.

Check out my free resources for mental health professionals working with children, adolescents, and families who want to integrate play therapy and expressive arts into their clinical work.

I work with individuals and agencies to develop successful strategies and meet the treatment needs of your child and adolescent clients and their families using play therapy & expressive arts.

Contact me to schedule a free 30-minute video call if you're ready to level up your skills

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. We'll explore all things play therapy. To elevate your work with children and adolescents using the therapeutic powers of play. 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. 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. Hey there. Good morning. So how many of you if I said I love writing treatment plans? They're the best. I can knock those out in no time. I use them all the time. How many of you would raise your hand and say, that's me? The likelihood that is the vast majority of you is pretty slim. Most, most mental health professionals hate writing treatment plans. Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate writing treatment plans. In fact, I've heard mental health professionals play therapists complain that they're useless. They don't, they're, they're just to satisfy the paperwork guides or satisfy agencies or satisfy insurance companies. And I actually don't agree with that. I mean, I, I get it, and at the same time, I think it's shortsighted typically when I dig a little deeper with people as to why they hate them so much or don't even do them. I, it's been my experience at quite a lot of people, especially in private practice. Don't even do treatment plans. And if your agency isn't doing quality control for paperwork, then the likelihood people are not doing their treatment plans is pretty high. And why is that? I, when I talk to people a little more in depth about treatment plans, what I usually find out is they either don't know how to write them. They don't how don't know how to do them effectively and quickly, and they don't know how to use treatment plans to get really good results for their clients. And why is that? I mean, think back, how many of you in graduate school when you were taking your courses, how many of you did a whole course on treatment plans and progress note writing and psychosocial assessments? You might have had a psychosocial assessment. Class where you wrote some of those, but the likelihood you did some treatment planning, um, is probably kind of low if you did. That's pretty good. The thing is, though, the other thing that's gonna determine your treatment plans is your agency. They may want specific things for their treatment plan based on what they're trying to accomplish and what. Probably what insurance or the their, whoever it is they're accountable to. So today I wanna talk about how can you write meaningful treatment plans that actually. Are useful and you can get them done quickly and learn a structure. That's the key. Learning a structure to get those done. So I, that's what I wanna talk about today. What can you do to write meaningful treatment plans to make them useful? And help you measure progress for your clients in treatment. So if you're joining me today, I would love to know who's here. Post your name, in the comments post, where you're from, what population you work with, what's your experience with treatment plans, and how do you feel about treatment plans? Um, so I'm Kathy Spooner. I'm a licensed, excuse me, licensed clinical social worker here in the US with over 30 years experience working with children, adolescents, and families. And I'm also a registered play therapist supervisor, and I've been doing that for a couple of decades using play therapy specifically with children, adolescents, and families. And, um, so if you're joining me, I'd love to know who's here, what's your experience? If you find this information useful, please feel free to share it across your social media platforms. Um, if you're following on YouTube, then feel free to hit the like button and the subscribe button. I go live every week.

At 7:

00 AM Pacific time and talk about all things play therapy and expressive arts, helping the next generation of play therapists kinda level up your play therapy skills to get really good results for your clients and make a meaningful impact in their lives. So I livestream into Instagram and I also livestream into my Facebook group. Play an expressive arts therapy playground. If you're on, its uh, if you're on YouTube and you're a child and adolescent therapist and you wanna use play therapy and expressive arts, feel free to pop over there to play an expressive arts therapy. Playground to join my Facebook group. You do have to answer all of the questions in order to get in or you won't get in. And I also live stream into my YouTube channel, Kathy Spooner, renewing Hearts Consulting or Renewing Hearts Training. And that's, uh, after the. After the live stream, the replays automatically generates. So they're pretty easy to find. In my Facebook group. I post, I pin them in the featured section. You may wanna pop over to my YouTube channel. You can click on the live tab and that's where all of my replays are. Um. So let's see. Hey, Steph. Actually do, oh, yay. Steph, you and I might be the, the outliers then on treatment plan. I find it useful. I struggle with the odd sentence structure. Medicaid wants. That's interesting. Uh, typically Medicaid, well, you're in Nevada. We write them. If you use a smart focus and actually Steph the treatment planning, I'm, I'm gonna talk a little bit more about some of the courses that I have coming out. I have a couple out, I have some other, other one's coming out. Um, for those of you in Plate Therapy Academy, the course that I'm about to say is going to be inside of Play Therapy Academy, and I'll talk a little bit more about Play Therapy Academy at the end, which is my online play therapy consultation program. So I, um, in the, in the next course treatment planning course that's coming out, Steph, I'm gonna go over this in, in detail. I'll give examples. If you use the SMART format, I don't know if you're familiar with smart goals and smart objectives that will meet Medicaid standards. Um, we write them all the time and don't have trouble with those. So. That's a great question though. Um, all right, so first and foremost, what is the purpose of treatment plans? There is actually a really good purpose for treatment plans. Part of it is, this is, okay, so there's two, there's two parts. To treatment plans, there's the treatment planning process and then the out, uh, outcome of the treatment planning process are treatment plans, and the treatment planning process is tied to your case conceptualization. Process, and that's another course. So if you're interested in that, these two go hand in hand. And if you don't have good case conceptualization, you're gonna have a hard time developing treatment plans. And that's usually where a lot of people get stuck, which is why I did a whole course just on case conceptualization. And then separated that from the treatment plan process because you need both. Your case conceptualization, and I'll talk a little bit more about that, is tied to treatment planning, so your treatment planning process. Is where you are identifying what needs to happen and the purpose of treatment plans is one to kind of co-create with your clients, find out what it is they wanna accomplish. Based on the reason that they're coming. And that's gonna also help them engage in the change process. So it gives them also a vision for the work that they're about to engage in and what it is they're going to be working on. So that's a really important part of engaging them in the treatment. Um. Treatment, creating those meaningful treatment plans. The other thing about, uh, treatment plans is they gi and the, and treatment planning process. It gives you a roadmap, so to speak, gives you some idea of what needs to happen. This is true even if you are a process-oriented therapist, like some play therapy models like Child-centered play therapy, gestalt Play Therapy, youngian Play therapy. These are more process oriented modalities. As opposed to something like I, I would say Adlerian is a little more structured. Um, definitely cognitive behavioral play therapy or prescriptive play therapy. These are a little more structured, so even with these oriented play therapy models, you still need to know. How, what your, where your client's starting and where they need to end up. So in between there's gonna, there's gonna be a kind of an ongoing process. These modalities still have phases or stages of treatment, which means there's certain things that have be accomplished in each stage of treatment, which means you have an idea of what needs to happen from the beginning. To the end, and one of the things that we know from research, there was some research that was done or not research. There was a, there was an article that I read. This was in the Psychotherapy Network, or Scott Miller and I forgot the other professional's name. Anyway, they. They were, um, the psychotherapy networker wrote this article in which they were asking, it was addressed towards burnout, but it was more focused on talking to these, these masters in the psychotherapy world. Like, so these are top level professionals who are at the top of their game getting really good treatment. Outcomes for their clients. And so they're asking these professionals like, how do you avoid burnout? But what was interesting about the article was it, it became more about the way in which the, these professionals operated. And what I mean by that is. They were able to conceptualize, this is your case conceptualization as well, and how it ties into treatment planning. They were able to identify, their goal is from the very beginning, what needs to happen in order for my client to get the results that they want in the most efficient. Manner possible. So what does that mean and how does that apply to treatment plans? It applies to treatment plans because this is your treatment planning process based on the conceptualization you did. This is where you're identifying what, what is going on and what needs to happen in order for change to occur. So you are, even with these process oriented. Models I, I propose, and I am a firm believer that treatment plans are still a really good. Roadmap that gives you an idea what needs to be accomplished and how it's gonna be accomplished, and how you're going to know, and how your client will know, and how their parents will know, or their guardians, how they're going to know when they've accomplished what they want to accomplish. Because we all know at the, at the end, as you're nearing termination. Some termination is always gonna bring up grief and loss issues. And so sometimes it's really hard for clients to let go and if you already have an idea of the benchmark, so to speak, that they're gonna accomplish, part of the work that you're gonna do is how to help them let go of some of the scaffolding, so to speak, of the treatment process and begin to. Work towards that successful graduation from counseling, and that's the goal. The goal is, I always tell my clients this all the time. When we're in that treatment planning process, my goal is to work myself out of a job. What that means is. Helping you accomplish what you want to accomplish to be better, to feel better, for things to be better. And the question that I always ask when I'm in that treatment planning process is, what would you like to be better by coming? And what will that look like? This gets buy-in from the clients and. Begins to help them understand, oh, okay, we have a purpose. Here's what, here's what I would like to accomplish. Here's what this is gonna look like. So as you're going through all of the phases of the treatment process, then you're gonna be kind of looking for these and, and facilitating that change process for those things to ac accomplish. So the other thing to think about and, and this to me is kind of related to documentation in general, it it relates to the treatment planning and treatment plan process in that it ties everything together. And this is called, I don't know if you've ever heard of the golden thread. Oops. I put threat. That should be golden. I'm gonna change that right now. Golden thread, if you're watching on Instagram, I mean, uh, you won't see my banners, but if you're on LinkedIn or Facebook or YouTube, you're gonna see my banners. Um, so the golden thread analogy for documentation, meaning if you think about a golden thread that ties together all of the components of documentation from your psychosocial assessment. To your diagnosis, to your treatment plan, to your progress notes, to your discharge summary, you, you should be able to see the connection between your case, uh, case conceptualization or bio-psychosocial assessment or whatever kind of assessment you do to your diagnosis because your diagnosis should be supported by your case conceptualization. And this is gonna tie to your treatment plan, and, and that is gonna tie to your progress notes. So all of these fit, fit together. And this, again, this is true, gives you documentation, gives you a picture of the treatment process and what needs to be addressed in treatment. And I know people are a little nervous about progress notes and what they put in documentation. I know. You know, none of us really love documentation. We didn't get into the mental health field to do documentation like we don't live for Progno Progress notes. We got into. This field because we wanna make a difference in the lives of children, adolescents, and families. That's where our heart is, that's where our passion is. And documentation is, is part of that process, and it's an important part of that process, even though it's not our favorite. It is an important process. And having that connection where you can see that connection between, um. The case conceptualization, treatment planning, diagnosis and progress notes is gonna provide that kind of good structure to help one. It shows what's going on in the treatment process, but it's also a way for you to kind of go back and look, oh, here's what we've been doing along the way. But it also, if you're in an agency that bills for insurance or you have some other kind of oversight, it's a way to make sure that the treatment that's being provided is. Right for that client. And it is being provided and it's being provided ethically and effectively. So that is just the reality of it. And the other part of that is making sure clients aren't. Unnecessarily in treatment for longer than they need to be. Um, that being said, some clients need to be in treatment for as long as they need to be in treatment. So there's always that balance between what the client needs, which is also, in my opinion, tied into. How effective and how efficient are we, are we at getting them where they are, where they need to be? And that what that usually means. Are we challenging them therapeutically when they need to be challenged or are we just kind of letting them come in and have like a grapey session and they're, we're not really challenging them to make much changes. I see that a lot. Um, so the documentation kind of gives an overview of that and the golden thread analogy. Is what ties it all together. And so here's the thing, aligning your case conceptualization and treatment planning is key to writing good treatment plans. And I kind of mentioned this already. I'm gonna go into a little more depth. So what is case conceptualization? Essentially, it's you're gathering all of the information. Most of us do a biopsychosocial assessment, and you're gathering that information and developing. A case conceptualization, which is essentially what exactly is the problem. So here's the behavior, but what's underneath the problem? What exactly is the problem and why is that problem happening? If you're interested in case conceptualization. Then I've done some previous livestream episodes, so you may wanna go look at some of those previous episodes. If you're in my Facebook group, you can just kind of peruse through the featured section. Um, if you're on LinkedIn, it's probably easiest to find them on my. YouTube channel and Instagram. You may wanna go over there and check out my YouTube channel as well in the uh, live tab. And if you're interested, I also have a course on, it's an online course. Take it in your time zone when it's convenient for you. On getting grounded in play therapy case conceptualization. So I have a whole series that I am in the process of creating. Two of them are already done. One of them is about ready to come out, which is, so it's called the Getting Grounded in Play Therapy Excellence Series. The first. The course is getting grounded in Play Therapy Foundations. The second course is getting getting grounded in play therapy case conceptualization, and the course that's about to come out by the end of the month is called Getting Grounded in Play Therapy Treatment Planning. And then the one after that will be on Progress Notes. Um, all of these courses are inside my Play Therapy Academy. Which I'll talk a little bit more about Play Therapy Academy because in Play Therapy Academy, we talk about these things all the time. We talk about case conceptualization and how that impacts treatment planning. So, uh, we'll do case presentations. It's an online group. We meet twice a month for online group consultation. We do case presentations, we'll do case conceptualization. We have other, uh, so we'll talk about what strategies are making sure the, um, play therapy model is being applied effectively and what kind of interventions might be useful for whatever is going on with, with your particular clients. We do that twice a month. In addition to those meetings, these courses are inside that course. That being said, if you're not in Play Therapy Academy and you don't need that consultation piece, these courses are available. Um, just kind of like a la carte, meaning you can just go on there and purchase a course if you want, but, so if you're interested in case conceptualization, I have a course on that. Treatment planning is taking that case conceptualization. So what exactly is the problem and why is it happening? And doing that with a cultural lens to make sure you're understanding the role of culture. What's going on with your clients, as well as identifying any resiliency factors. You take that to figure out and identify the focus for treatment, like what needs to happen in order to change, and how will that change take place. That's gonna be, the result of that is gonna be a treatment plan. So it's your case conceptualization and that forms the foundation for your treatment planning, which is what? What are you gonna do? So what's the problem? And the treatment plan is how are you gonna help your client get better, and what do they need to do in order to get better? The thing with case conceptualization and treatment planning is that it needs to align with your play therapy theoretical model. And why is this important for good treatment outcomes? Because your play therapy theoretical model is gonna ground your sessions. In a theoretical model, even if you're using an integrated approach to play therapy. That's like prescriptive play therapy is eco ecosystem play therapy. These are integrative models and each of the interventions are gonna be grounded in a theoretical model, which determines one, how you show up in the sessions, like your therapeutic presence. It's also gonna. Help you identify your, your theory model dictates and influences how you conceptualize the problem. So, a CBT plate therapist is gonna conceptualize the problem much differently than a child-centered plate therapy, uh, therapist. So your theory model. Grounds your work from session to session, and it helps you navigate the ups and downs of the treatment process because at some point, usually in the middle phase. Or when things aren't going so well. A lot of times what will happen is people begin to change and do things differently, and it's a lot like throwing spaghetti on the wall and hoping something sticks rather than being more intentional because your theory model is gonna help you figure out, okay, what's going on here? And then what needs to happen in order to help my client work through this? That's your theory model and this, this helps you. Formulate your treatment plan because your treatment plan is gonna be based outta your theoretical model. So how you conceptualize the problem then determines what you, what needs to happen for you to know how to fix the problem. And so they do tie in together and this is where they, even with process oriented. Treatment plans, they are still meaningful because then what happens is you, you have, you and your client came up with and co-created what, what they want to be better and what that will look like, and you put that down in the format of a treatment plan with goals and objectives that identify what you want, what what you. What your client wants to be better and, and then you've given that language in terms of goals and objectives and interventions to identify, okay, here's, here's what needs to happen and how will I know when things are better. You're gonna be able to look at your goals and objectives to get a sense of where you are in that process. But the other thing is, if you're reviewing these regularly. With your clients, their parents, depending on the age of the child, then it kind of reminds you, okay, here's what we're working on.'cause how many of you get in the treatment process and you kind of get a little lost in there and things happen and you go this way and that way. It kind of helps you if you periodically review, go back and review those goals and objectives with your clients and look at the interventions. Are these still working? Then it kind of helps keep you on track of where we're going and what needs to happen. It also helps your client kind of come back and think about, oh yeah, we're working on this. Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be doing this. Especially with parents, they're working on some parenting goals. You should have some parenting goals, uh, and objectives in your treatment plan. So reminding parents what they're working on, reminding kids what they're working on. Uh, depending on how the age of the child and if they're in that process. And so it really helps your clients also be engaged in the change process in a much more intentional and focused way. So if you're writing treatment goals and objectives and using interventions that meet the need, then, then they will. Be good. And if they're not, then reviewing those means, oh yeah, we need to make some adjustments here. What adjustments do we need to make? And you're doing it together. To me, that's one of the most effective things about treatment plans is going back and reviewing them and saying, oh, here's where we are. Is this still working? If we need to shift a little bit, what is that gonna look like? So. So that is it for today. Let me do a little recap on today. Um. Writing meaningful treatment plans in play therapy. First and foremost, treatment plans are the outcome of the collaboration between you and your clients to identify what you and your clients are gonna work on during the treatment process. And the golden thread. The golden thread analogy is, um, how all of these different parts of the documentation work together and support each other. So you wanna make sure you're tying them all together. And that does kind of give you a roadmap. I always think of it like a plumb line. I don't know if you're familiar. This is kind of a, a building analogy. In order for, um, builders to have a straight line, they use this chalk line and it rolls out and they have a start and an end, and it's a, it's a chalk, it's string of chalk on it. So they, they pull it out and it's really tight and then they'll, they'll kind of pluck it so it leaves this chalk line. On the surface where they need to create that straight line. And that's kind of what the golden thread, I think of the golden thread analogy is like that plumb line, are we all matching up? And um, what, what is this picture look like through my documentation? And then finally, treatment plans are the outcome. Of your case conceptualization and the treatment planning process. In order to have effective treatment plans, you first need to have effective case conceptualization. That's gonna then. Identify what the focus of treatment needs to be. So what are you gonna do to help your clients? What are your clients gonna do in order to get better? That's that treatment planning process, and the outcome of that is a treatment plan and your case conceptualization and your treatment planning process. Are heavily influenced by your theoretical model. Your theoretical model is what influences how you identify the problem and how the problem is going to be resolved. So that's an important part of the process. So that is it for today. Um, if you're interested in Play Therapy Academy. Play Therapy Academy is an online, online play therapy consultation program to help you do that case conceptualization with each of your clients. So we know in play therapy we need good training. The thing is. Consultation helps you take that, what you've learned in your training and apply it from session to session, to session to session. And in that, uh, uh, consultation program, we, we do, we meet twice a month. And you have not only my 30 years of experience, you have the experience and wisdom of the other members, uh, in the program. And so what we'll do is we'll staff cases, we'll do that case conceptualization, we'll figure out what the problem is. We'll identify what needs to happen. We'll give some ideas. We'll also make sure whatever theoretical, theoretical model you're using, that that's being applied so you can get the best outcomes for your clients. Plus, you have the support of your colleagues. We have some amazing professionals in our plate and my. Play Therapy Academy. So I have two, uh, two cohorts right now. I do have some openings. They, when they fill up, they're gonna be full and I won't have openings until. Um, somebody isn't doing it anymore right now. I have, uh, I believe I have four openings. So I have one, one or two left in my Saturday cohort, and then I have a couple in my Wednesday cohort. If you're interested in Play Therapy Academy, then you can, uh, pop over to my website at rh play therapy ca uh, rh play therapy training.com. Go on the supervision page, look for Play Therapy Academy. Schedule a free 30 minute interview and we can talk about how Play Therapy Academy can work for you and make sure it's a good fit for you. If you're interested in some of the courses that I have, you can hop over to my website on the courses page. All righty, and I will see you next week. Bye. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Next Level Play Therapy. I hope you found the discussion valuable and gained new insights and ideas to support your work helping children, adolescents, and families heal. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. Your feedback helps to improve and reach more people who can benefit from this information. Remember. Play therapy is a powerful tool for healing and growth. 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. If you have any questions or topics, suggestions for future. I'd love to hear from you. 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. Thank you once again for listening to Next Level Play Therapy. Until next time, keep playing, learning and growing.