Library · Domain 3. Treatment Planning & Continuity of Care · 3B. Continuity of Care
Task 3B.3
Planning how the client will maintain progress
“Discuss with clients how they will maintain progress” (NBCC, 2027 task 3B.3)
Before counseling ends, counselor and client discuss how the client will keep the gains they have made. This consolidates learning, builds confidence and prepares the client for setbacks. The exam tests maintenance planning as part of good termination.
Key points
- Review what has changed and what the client did to make it happen, so they attribute progress to their own effort.
- Identify the skills and strategies that helped most and how the client will keep practicing them.
- Anticipate challenges and high-risk situations, and plan responses.
- Distinguish a lapse (a temporary slip) from a relapse (a return to the earlier pattern), and plan what to do after a lapse.
- Identify supports: people, groups and resources the client can turn to.
- Discuss how to return for booster sessions if needed.
- Gradually spacing out sessions before ending gives the client practice maintaining gains with less support.
In practice
Near the end of treatment for panic disorder, a client and counselor list the techniques that helped, the situations most likely to bring panic back, and a plan to practice interoceptive exercises monthly. They move to sessions every three weeks for the last two months.
A client finishing couples work with his wife agrees to keep their weekly check-in conversation and to call for a booster session if their old argument pattern returns for more than two weeks.
Check yourself
Why have clients identify what they did to create change?
Attributing progress to their own effort builds confidence and makes it more likely they will keep using those strategies.
What is the difference between a lapse and a relapse?
A lapse is a temporary slip, while a relapse is a return to the earlier problem pattern.
How can spacing out sessions help maintenance?
It lets the client practice maintaining gains with less support while help is still available.
NBCC's knowledge and skills for 3B. Continuity of Care
Knowledge of: Levels of care; Professional wills; Community partner/resources; Release of information (ROI) protocols and requirements; Wraparound services; Stages of change; Discharge practices; Proper termination protocols.
Skill in: Establishing contact with community resources; Applying relapse prevention strategies; Evaluating readiness for discharge.
A study guide written by ExamDragon from NBCC's published task; not NBCC material and not part of the exam.