You're listening to the Play Therapy Podcast with Dr.

Brenna Hicks, your source for centered and focused play therapy coaching.

Hi, I'm Dr.

Brenna Hicks, The Kid Counselor.

This is the Play Therapy Podcast where you get a master class in child-centered play therapy and practical support and application for your work with children and their families.

In today's episode, I am answering a question from Sarah in California.

And this is about The parent consultation process and how to provide that to parents and what that process looks like.

So, Sarah, thanks so much for the email.

Congrats on your new practice, by the way.

And I want to read a little bit of the email and then we'll dive in together.

Really quickly before we do that, I know I announced it in the curriculum podcast, but maybe for those of you that have not listened to that yet and you just popped onto this one.

We are doing an in-person live contact hour, APT approved conference, January 30th, 31st, and February 1st in Tampa.

So, if you can make your way to our little peninsula down here at the southeastern part of the world, or at least the the North American world, if you can come and hang out, I would love to have you please go to playtherapynow.com and check that out and you'll see all the different options.

There's savings on cost if you sign up in December.

So don't like wait and think, well, let me figure it out cause then you're gonna pay more and I'm all about trying to be frugal.

So, come hang out.

I would love to spend time with you.

So many of you have already told me that you're coming.

I actually, I, like I tell you this really funny fast story.

I had dinner with one of my coaching participant graduates.

She was down from Indiana and in Florida, so Mya and I went to dinner with her.

And she's like, hey, so this other friend of mine and I, they're both CCPTs.

We're, we're coming, but we don't even know like what, what we just mentioned, heard you mention that we were doing something and so we're coming, but can you give us details?

I was like, wow, that is, that is serious commitment right there.

You, you say you're in and you don't even know what you're in for.

So it is at Steinbrenner Field, close to the water.

With palm trees and beautiful weather and baseball and me and CCPT and man, it's gonna be so exciting.

So, love to have you playtherapynow.com Check it out.

All right, back to Sarah's email.

I've recently started my own child-centered private practice.

I've worked with kids for a long time, but have just recently thrown myself into the child-centered approach because I was primarily using non-directive therapy already.

I'm getting referrals and establishing a number of new clients in the past few months, and my playroom is about 85% as well stocked as I would like it to be.

I'm in the process of setting up my first round of parent check-ins for my 5 session benchmark with some of my new clients.

I established at the onset of therapy that these are included as part of treatment, and I'm not planning to charge a fee.

However, in looking forward to my growing caseload, it has just struck me that this will end up being 10 to 15 hours a month of unpaid work.

I'm wondering how you handle parent check-ins, if you charge for them, and if the rate might differ from the play session fee.

Any insight would be appreciated.

All right, Sarah, I'm actually really glad that you emailed about this.

I don't typically get businessy questions very often, and that's a huge part of the coaching.

That we hang out and do talk about all week long with my coaching folks.

So, this is really helpful.

And for those of you that have the luxury of determining how you handle parent check-ins and otherwise, in other words, I don't know where that came from.

In other words, if you have the ability to set your own schedule to decide what you can and can't bill for, you know, obviously your own private practice, an independent contractor and a group practice.

Sometimes if you're in an agency or Some other kind of capacity, they will give you that freedom.

And these are important things to consider because this is part of the process.

We cannot provide CCPT without also engaging parents.

And we know the clinical outcomes are better when parents are involved.

So, this is a, a really big piece of our work and best practice is something that we need to discuss.

So, Yes, absolutely.

For us at our center and what I coach all of my business coaching folks, we do not charge for parent consults.

And here's why.

In the medical space, parents are given access to records.

So all a parent has to do is ask for a request of records, and they're able to see all medical treatments and notes and everything related to the client's file.

Mental health, the rules are different.

Confidentiality lies with the client even though the client is a minor.

So, the parent is not allowed to have access to the records.

The parent is not allowed to see your notes.

That is covered under confidentiality privilege.

However, parents have to know what's going on.

They have to be involved.

They have to feel like they're aware of progress that's being made.

You want them to be engaged.

You want them to be working at home to support the work that's taking place in the playroom.

So this kind of seems like it's a conflicting agenda until you realize that the free parent consult is the way around that.

And so what we have always done, I've been doing this almost 21 years and I have never once charged for a parent consult.

Why?

Because it's worked into the cost of treatment.

In other words, we know that the average number of sessions is 30 to 40 for play therapy.

OK, so let's just go to the high end of that.

Let's say you're going to work with a client 40 times, 40 sessions.

If you do an initial parent consult that's free, and then you see the parent every 5 sessions through a 40-week treatment cycle, you know that you're giving 9 parent consult hours away.

But it is included in the 40 hours that you've been paid for.

So essentially, you've been paid for 40 hours of work and you will work 49 hours with that family.

This is why you establish your rate to allow for those extra 9 hours to be added.

So in other words, if you say, OK, I'm charging $100 an hour, by the way, you should be charging a lot more than $100 an hour, but for round numbers we're going to go $100 an hour.

If I'm going to see this family 40 sessions.

I'm going to make $4000 with this family.

OK, but that means I'm going to work 49 hours for $4000.

Is that worth it to me?

Do I feel that my hourly rate is enough if I'm going to work 49 hours to make $4000?

If you say, well, that's less than $100 an hour, I'd like to make more than that, then you bump your rate to $125.

You bump your rate to 150.

And the purpose of this is, so if you bump to $150 that's a $6000 life cycle with the client.

Can you work 49 hours for $6000?

Does that seem like it's more what you were hoping for as far as an hourly rate?

You work it into the cost of your rate.

And here's the premise behind it.

Parents are not going to stay bought in.

Parents are not going to stick it out.

Parents are not going to wait for progress if they don't feel like they know what's happening, and you have to do a lot of hand holding and a lot of pep talking and a lot of encouraging and a lot of reminding them of what's happening that happens in those five week consults.

And I would argue that it's a hard pill to swallow for a parent.

To pay for 5 sessions straight of therapy.

And then have a therapist look at them and say, well, if you want to know what's going on, you're going to have to pay me again so that I can tell you what's going on.

I don't feel good about that.

I'm not sure that that's ethically appropriate.

I think, I, I mean, honestly, it feels gross to me.

If I'm just being really blatant, it feels gross to say if you want to know what's going on and you want an update on your child's progress, then give me more money.

I don't think that that's best practice.

And so we work it into the cost.

They are given those parent consults for free for the entirety of the program or the, the treatment and Sarah, back to your email, when you said this will be 10 to 15 hours a month.

Not really.

And here's why I'm saying that, because most of the time, Hold on, let me back up.

So, if you start all of your clients at once, in other words, when you first start out in private practice or when you first join a practice or when you first get your caseloads full, it does kind of work in this weird way where almost all your kids are having your 5 weeks together and then almost all your kids are having 10 weeks together.

So at the beginning, it does seem like it kind of gets bunched up.

But once you've been doing this work for a while, You may only have 2 or 3.

Families each month that are on that 5 or 10 or 15 week mark.

So it actually ends up not being that many check-ins that you're doing in a month span because if you have 20 or 25 kids, half of those kids are not gonna be on a 5, 10, 15, or 20-week mark all in one month.

And it eventually kind of works itself out where you're only doing like one consult a week usually.

So, you know, most of the time, on average, you're looking at maybe 4 consults at most.

That you would be doing a month, maybe 5 or 6 on a busy month, but that's certainly not 10 to 15 like you're referencing here.

And the goal is that parents feel like they're being given value.

When you don't bill them, they know what your hourly rate is.

They know that your, your time is valuable, and they know that you could bill for that.

But when you don't, it's goodwill, it's perception of value, it's relationship building.

And they know, like and trust you.

The general public already has a negative connotation and association that therapists are greedy and they'll just bill people over and over and over again, and it's all about money.

I think this flies in the face of that because I think when we say I never bill you for the meetings that we have together, I just want you to have an update.

I want to know how things are going.

I want to encourage you.

I want to equip you with some skills that you can be doing at home.

Those are highly valuable to parents, and they feel that you really care about their child and their family.

That's the process that we've always used and it has served us really well.

And interestingly, related aside, you all make fun of that phrase a lot.

I just was subpoenaed last week and I was in court on Monday, and my court fee is really, really high.

My hourly court rate is really high on purpose.

And I was on the hearing, it was a virtual hearing.

So I was on the computer for an hour and a half.

And we billed my very high rate for that hour and a half.

And when the mom got the invoice, she called Mya, my assistant, and said, Oh, I'm kind of surprised by this.

And Mya said, Well, last time Brenna appeared for your hearing, the child's father paid for the subpoena.

So this time, like you weren't aware of the fee because he paid last time, you know, this is her court fee, and then this was her comment, I'm not making this up.

This is truly what she said to Mya.

Well, I mean, all of the hours that she has given us for free over the course of time that we've worked with her, this is nothing.

That's her perception.

She knows the value.

By the way, I've worked with this family for almost 5 years, so you can imagine how many hours I've given to them.

Of course, you can also imagine how much money they've spent being with me for 5 years.

So it all evens out in the end.

But she said, I, of all the hours that she's given to us, this is nothing, and she knows the value of the consult hours that I've provided to her and to the child's dad.

So, this is why we do this.

This is why we don't bill, because families understand your concern and your care is for the child, and you're gonna give value.

That's really helpful.

So, Sarah, I'm so glad that you emailed in.

Thank you so much for that question.

Hope that that's helpful.

If y'all have any follow-up questions or you want me to clarify anything, or you just want to say hello, please email me brenna@thekidcounselor.com.

Love y'all.

We'll talk again soon.

Bye.

Thank you for listening to the Play Therapy Podcast with Dr.

Brenna Hicks.

For more episodes and resources, please go to www.playtherapypodcast.com.