hi this is Megan Mitchell with agents of change social work test prep and today I am bringing you another social work shorts and today is a very very very important topic that we're going to be going over we will be going over the social work helping process and this is going to be very important for you to have an understanding of because it's really going to be helpful when you see questions on the exam there are that end in the word what would you do first or what would you do next so let's dive right in the process that I'm referring to is sometimes also referred to as the Social Work helping process and it is a six step process that begins with the engagement phase and ends with termination the six steps in this process are engagement assessment planning intervention evaluation and termination and this process is going to be very helpful like I said when you are met with those first and next questions and there is a little memory trick to help you learn the acronym for this process and it's eat pie today and you can see all the letters that you need to know in the acronym are highlighted EAP IET so engagement assessment planning intervention evaluation and termination and we will talk a little bit more about this at the end but knowing this process is more than just knowing the terms that are listed here it's going to be really important that you are not only able to identify the different stages in this process but be able to apply it to case vignettes and scenarios so we will go deeper into detail on each of these six and then at the end we'll go over some ways that we can really get to this information to stick our first stage is engagement and this is generally done in the first session or the first couple of sessions depending on your setting depending on your agency policies but we cannot begin a therapeutic relationship without engaging the client so this phase is important in building rapport building trust because we want our clients to come back to see us for a second appointment at a third appointment so it's really important that in this engagement phase we are building rapport with the client we're building trust with the client also in the engagement phase this is generally the intake so we would be going over a confidentiality we would be making sure that they understand the risks of treatment we'd be obtaining their informed consent and then also what's really important in the engagement phase is you're setting boundaries and explaining and going over expectations and this is the expectations that the client might have for treatment because they might come to us and have unrealistic expectations so it's important that we establish that as soon as possible also this would be when we go over our policies for accepting calls I'm preferred methods of communication all very very very important in this first stage because you don't want to get six weeks into treatment and a client's upset because they thought that you would be reaching out more or that you would be reaching out on the weekend so very important that boundaries and expectations are clear entered are discussed with the client and also what their expectations are what do they want to get out of this what is their experience or what are they how are they feeling coming into treatment so engagement very important we're building that relationship we want that client to come back we want them to and you know partake in this therapeutic relationship so engagement I think is one of the most important steps in this phase we need them to be engaged to be able to continue on in this therapeutic relationship the second step is assessment and assessment is simply assessing for what the problem is or the presenting problem is so in the assessment phase you are going to be collecting a lot of information so you might be completing a biopsychosocial assessment or you might be completing a questionnaire or you might be completing a social history this is where the client is going to give you information about maybe their past history their medical history presenting problems a variety of different things so that you can determine where you know the course of treatment needs to go so this would be the time where we're determining what their strengths are what their weaknesses are because we need um kind of a guideline or and we want to identify what areas we need to work on in treatment so assessment to do step number two you need to have um you know that bond and building that rapport with the client already because there are going to be more willing to share information with you if they feel more comfortable with you and a lot of the information we collect during the assessment it can be very daunting it can be a very long process so it's important that we had taken the time to properly engage the client before moving into this assessment phase I have an example here say you have a client come in and in this phase in the assessment phase you might determine that anxiety is the main problem you're going to work on with this client so you have assessed that the primary problem on the primary area that you're going to work on is anxiety management so we've engaged the client we've assessed for the problem the next step is to plan so planning stage is really where you are planning out your roadmap for treatment or how you're going to engage with this client so you are planning simply for for the course of what is going to happen in your and your time with this client this might include setting goals it might be setting objectives and remember when you're setting goals and objectives with a plan you want it to be a very participatory process you want them to be able to participate you're doing this together you're not just setting the goals you want to know what they want to work on as well and here you're probably planning for what type of treatment modality are going to use so are you going to use CBT II are you going to use DBT also frequency are you going to be meeting with the client once a week are you going to be meeting with the client three times a week and with planning this all depends on how the client um you know what their needs are how they're presenting and also what type of setting you're in if you're a you know inpatient unit that's a lot different than if you're planning for what you're going to do with your client in a school setting so planning is different based on your setting based on your role and based on how the client presents so just keep that in mind planning is really where you are making your action plan for the rest of how treatment is going to go so given that example of the client that's presenting with anxiety in the planning phase you might determine that you're going to address anxiety through 12 weeks of CBT and the goal that you're setting is for the client to utilize coping strategies that decrease negative thinking in 3 out of 5 situations this is of course just an example but you do want your goals to be specific you don't just want to say I want the client to improve because that could mean a variety of different things you need to kind of have examples so you know this could be that the client is using mindfulness in three out of five stressful situations but you just really do want to have some sort of tangible goal that the client can meet also make sure that your goals are realistic we don't want to you know say that the client is going to increase by a hundred percent if their baseline is that they're not using any coping techniques right now so make sure that they're they're reasonable and that I'm you and the client have planned these together the fourth stage is intervention and I have here that this is really where the bulk of the clinical works going to be done because this is where you're you're doing the intervention you're you you've laid out that action plan and now you're completing the action plan so here's where you're doing that active therapeutic active clinical work so in this stage you might be using techniques you might be trying a variety of different things but you also might be giving clients things to work on outside of sessions so there might be you know some homework tasks or things that they're going to be mindful of in their time outside of session intervention is really like you know where you're doing the work to work towards those goals and depending on your setting depending on you know what the clients working on the intervention phase may be long term you might see you might be in a setting where you've worked with a client for two years that would be more of a long-term intervention or you might be in a short-term sending where you see the client twice so just also be mindful of your setting be mindful of what you're working on the using our example of the claim with anxiety the intervention phase would us actually be utilizing those CBT techniques that would be those 12 weeks of CBT so this might include working on distorted thinking patterns this might be practicing muscle relaxation this might be practicing mindfulness all those different things that you're doing that you know therapeutic work that goes along with whatever treatment you're doing that would be the intervention phase so you're you're doing the work after intervention we have evaluation and it's important to note that evaluation should be done throughout your time with the client and evaluation is where we're looking at our clients progress are they making progress towards their goals are they not making progress how engaged is the client and evaluation is important because we don't want to waste time with the client we don't want to go fifteen weeks and we've realized you know this modality really doesn't work for them or you know this technique is not really working for them so evaluation is important because it it guides where you're going to go are there areas that need to be changed do you need to change the frequency what is going on and how can you best meet the needs of the client so you're evaluating their progress you're evaluating how they're taking to the different interventions this is a really really important thing it's going to be even more important as you move towards the end of treatment because you need to make sure that you know they've met treatment goals before we can move to the next stage so you're determining if they've made progress if there's any changes that need to be made the example we're gonna use is has your client actually made progress towards decreasing that negative thinking so they came to us they had a lot of distorted thoughts they're very anxious in the evaluation we'd be seeing they practicing those muscle relaxation techniques are they working on reversing the distorted thinking are they identifying automatic thoughts those type of things would be part of a CBT regiment and we would need to evaluate if it's working or not if the clients saying yes I'm practicing all of these things and after 12 weeks they have met our treatment goals they're using them in three out of five situations then we can say that you know maybe it's time to move to determination phase but we want to make sure that what we're doing is actually helping the client and that it's actually sticking so say we've evaluated the client has met treatment goals we would move into the next and last phase of treatment and that is termination and remember that termination is not a one-time thing it's generally a phase of treatment that you're going to move to towards with your client and termination is when we're coming towards the end or closing the therapeutic relationship with the client um ideally it would be we'd give some clients some time to prepare for this and ideally termination would come when both the therapist and the client have determined that services and therapy is no longer needed sometimes this can be tricky you might feel that a client's ready to terminate and they might not however it's like up to us to use our clinical knowledge and our expertise to determine if it is appropriate time to terminate with the client it is important to note that however a client can terminate on their own at any time we do not force a client to remain in treatment we can give them advice we can you know tell them this is my opinion however it's up to them unless their court man data that they can terminate at any time you should be discussing with termination with clients early you know give them enough time and process this process termination with them so what does termination look like you probably are going to be going over goals that have been met you're going to be going over all the things you've worked on so far and then you're also going to maybe refer them to outside resources or give them techniques that they can use outside of treatment we don't just leave someone high and dry termination is really to prepare them to take the skills they've learned and apply them outside of the therapeutic relationship and it's important to note that termination can signal a variety of different feelings depending on the plan some people might be feeling proud there might be a lot of joy that comes with termination because they've met these goals they you know they've really come a long way for others termination can be really an anxiety and provoking and fearful time they might have been really involved in treatment for a long period of time and they might be worried that things will just go back to the way they were they might be worried that they're just going to regress so it's our job to support them help them transfer these skills but just be mindful that if termination can be different for every person and the reaction might be different so you're gonna need to use your clinical skills to determine what type of support and what level of support that client needs so termination like I said it's usually a process and we're we're ending the therapeutic relationship in some sense so those were the six steps of the helping process starting with the engagement process phase and ending at termination remember this is important to know for those questions that are what you do first or what you do next and I want you to have this process in the back of your mind because say you get a question stem that says you have completed the intake with the client you've gone over confidentiality and you know you've build rapport what do you do next so you would use this process and next you would need to assess for what the problem is so it's really important for those first and next questions or like what you do first well obviously you need to engage the client before we can do an intervention with the client so keep this process in the back of your head know it and know it well and these this is some advice that I give for how to learn it and how to really know it because we can dis you know say the the six stages but what I want you to be able to do is be able to apply it as we know this exam is a lot of application and reasoning so it's not just going to say what is the third stage and the helping process you need to be able to apply this information to clients to case finance into scenarios so my tip what I always tell people that are working on applying and working on those higher level critical thinking skills is to think of a past client you've had or someone that you've worked with either in a job situation or in your field placement or make up a case scenario and then use this helping process these six steps to walk through each of the stages so you're gonna have this client and you know your head and you're gonna say how would I engage this client how would I assess and walk through each step and come up with examples and when you do that on it's actually proven in the learning process that the information sticks a lot more and it helps you apply it so use real-life experiences and examples to help the information stick for you I suggest you do this not only with this process but with a variety of different things because when you go to take the test on test day that knowledge is going to come a lot easier because you have those examples that you can quickly go back to to help you in your in your process so that is a brief overview of the helping process very very very important so make sure you know it make sure you can apply it and make sure I would also say take some practice questions and use this process to try and answer those first and next questions and see how that works for you but definitely try and apply it to your studying so I hope you enjoyed our content today if you are looking for more content I have a 7 session pre-recorded series on a variety of the big topics and my content is really for visual and auditory learners I have YouTube videos it's very similar how my YouTube content works there's practice questions that we break down and then also at the end of my seventh session series I have a 50 questions mini prep test so if you're interested in that you can check it out on Gumroad that's where all of my products are and then if you also just have any questions please feel free to email me I also do have live study groups so study groups are you know one hour to an hour and a half on a variety of different topics and study groups are really good for people who like to interact so if you like to talk through information ask questions bounce your ideas off of other people a study group might be really helpful for you too so you could also email me and I can tell you the evaluable 'ti of my study group so I run between four and six a month so check out my information check out my other free content up on YouTube and let me know if you have any questions and lastly remember wherever you are in your subject study during a study journey that um you got this be confident in who you are as a social worker find ways to ground yourself find ways that work for you and I wish you the best of luck on your studying journey thank you for tuning in