Language: ASPPB offers a French form of the EPPP (the FEPPP) where a licensing authority legally requires one. ASPPB has not yet published the competency statements in French, so our questions and cards are in English until it does.

4.A.1

Consultation models: who the client is and what the consultee needs

ASPPB's competency statement 4.A.1: Consultation models and processes

Consultation is an indirect service: the psychologist helps a consultee (a teacher, nurse, manager or team) serve their own clients or run their own program better, and the consultee keeps responsibility for the work. Models differ in where they place the problem and the consultant's role. Naming the model at the start tells you whom to assess, what to offer, what to leave to the consultee and how the work should end.

Key ideas

Caplan's four types: Client-centered case consultation advises on a particular client; consultee-centered case consultation strengthens the consultee's handling of such cases; program-centered administrative consultation advises on a program; consultee-centered administrative consultation builds the administrators' own skills.
The consultee's difficulty: In consultee-centered work, Caplan asks what keeps a capable professional from managing the case: a lack of knowledge, of skill, of self-confidence or of professional objectivity. Each calls for a different response, from information to support.
Behavioral consultation: Bergan and Kratochwill's model runs in four stages: problem identification, problem analysis, plan implementation and plan evaluation. The consultant and consultee define the problem in observable terms and judge the plan by data.
Process consultation: Schein contrasts selling expertise, or diagnosing and prescribing as a doctor would, with process consultation, in which the consultant helps the organization see and act on its own processes so that it keeps the capacity once the consultant leaves.
A coordinate relationship: The consultee is free to accept or reject advice, and the consultant does not take over the case. The usual sequence is entry and contracting, assessment, intervention, evaluation and a planned disengagement.

Worked example

The director of a university residence hall asks a psychologist how to approach a student whose roommates report skipped meals and hours of exercise each night. The director handles homesickness, conflict and alcohol concerns well but says they know little about eating disorders.

Map the triad: the director is the consultee and the student is the director's client. The psychologist will not assess or treat the student unless that becomes a separate, agreed service.
Classify the request as consultee-centered case consultation, since the aim is to help the director handle this case and similar ones in future.
Name the difficulty: the director has skill and confidence with students in distress but lacks knowledge, so the main intervention is information, such as warning signs, how to raise concern and the campus referral routes.
Leave the decisions with the director, agree how both will know whether the plan worked, and set a check-in after the director's conversation with the student.

Identify the consultee, the client and the source of the consultee's difficulty before choosing what to offer.

Check yourself

A psychologist evaluates a child referred by a pediatrician and sends the pediatrician written recommendations for managing the child's care. In Caplan's terms, this is:

Practise 4.A.1

Sources

Caplan (1963), Types of mental health consultation, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 33, 470-481 (PMID 14018410), The four types of mental health consultation (PubMed holds no abstract; the content is cited from the article)
Caplan and Caplan (1993), Mental Health Consultation and Collaboration, Consultee-centered case consultation: lack of knowledge, skill, self-confidence or professional objectivity; the coordinate relationship and the consultee's freedom to reject advice
Bergan and Kratochwill (1990), Behavioral Consultation and Therapy, The four stages: problem identification, problem analysis, plan implementation, plan evaluation
Schein (1999), Process Consultation Revisited: Building the Helping Relationship, The purchase of expertise, doctor and patient, and process consultation models
Sheridan, Witte, Holmes, Coutts, Dent, Kunz and Wu (2017), A randomized trial examining the effects of Conjoint Behavioral Consultation in rural schools: Student outcomes and the mediating role of the teacher-parent relationship, Journal of School Psychology, 61, 33-53 (PMID 28259243), Abstract: conjoint behavioral consultation described as an indirect service delivery model, with randomized evidence of student benefit