Client meetings

Your organization probably has a set of policies and procedures that set boundaries on what you do in client meetings. Obviously, you need to follow them. they will include maintaining the client’s confidentiality, privacy and dignity.

Hold regular meetings with the client to review how it's going. In many cases, they will be alone, but it can be appropriate for them to have a significant other present. In simple cases, you could hold the meeting by telephone.

Make a record of the meeting. In some organizations, it's simply some extra boxes or lines on the case plan form.

The first meeting

If it's the first meeting, set some boundaries and get the client to agree to them. These include:

• rights, roles, responsibilities, decision-making processes, accountability and outcomes
• ways of addressing the client's experience, skills, values and development
• the effect of statutory mandates on interventions, the client and significant others
• the effect of value systems on outcomes (yours, the client's and key stakeholders)
• How you will share information sharing
• how you will plan
• how you will resolve any conflict

In general, setting boundaries will be more about explaining your role, understanding the situation, and offering help, and asking for co-operation. While you might need to be firm, try to avoid giving the impression that you are laying down the law.

Each meeting

Start each meeting by re-establishing an appropriate rapport and encouraging discussion. Establish the purpose, objectives and agenda of the meeting

One of your core roles is to make sure that your clients are satisfactorily using any support services and associated resources to which you have referred them, considering what they can do and how they have performed. Give them any support or help they need.

Get a general picture of how it's going and their feedback. Then go though anything relevant in the case plan meeting listed above. Make sure to ask specifically about anything you suspect might not be going so well. If necessary, resolve any conflicts. Make sure you give them whatever encouragement you can; it is more important than you think that they feel good about the whole process.

Your counseling role

You also need to take a more counseling role. Work cooperatively with clients and their significant others to achieve changes in behavior and life skills

Effectively communicate and build relationships with the client and their significant others:

• Develop empathy, trust, and rapport
• Listen reflectively and respond respectfully,
• Gather information
• Negotiate
• Be assertive when you need to be
• Manage any conflicts

Give support in a way that focuses on the client and is in keeping with their particular needs. Be  responsive to their individual circumstances and aspirations and (where necessary) their carers and supporters. Help the client to develop strategies to address their unique context (psychological, biological, social and emotional). Recognize and acknowledge their interests, preferences and concerns.

Part of your role is to build on the client's strengths. Support the client to identify their own strengths and what they can do to look after themselves, then  acknowledge it themselves.

Help the client to identify their existing positive coping skills and behaviors that they will use most and to those they they still need.. Then support them to identify coping skills likely to cause harm to the client or others and evaluate the impacts of coping skills and behaviors on themselves and others.

Tell the client how to identify positive coping skills and behaviors and support them to do it. Then identify opportunities to mobilize their strengths, develop solutions for the concerns and needs that affect them at the time, and test them in practice. As they go, give them support and  monitor their progress in using positive coping skills and behaviors.

Support and help the client to identify a meaningful network of people who can support them. If the client isn't already part of it, give them help and support to develop a strategy to join it effectively. If they are already part of a network, support them to develop a strategy to maintain it.

Work with the client and your supervisor to identify and address any difficulties. (If you can't so it all yourself and the client needs it, support them to make referrals to services that can help them establish and/or maintain positive coping skills and behaviors.)

Defining needs and rights

Define the needs and rights of the different parties involved (the individual, the family, and the community), and explore them as they relate to your client. Your organization has a responsibility to protect the rights of everybody concerned.

Gather all information and options your need so that the client can  make informed choices and decisions and go through the decision-making process with them:. Identify positive and negative consequences, including risks and constraints, associated with different choices.

At the end

Identify outcomes of the meeting and negotiate them if necessary. Make a record of the meeting. In some organizations, it's simply filling in some extra boxes or lines on the case plan form.