PSY 620 Module 1 Interactions, Consultation and Collaboration Example

Helping Through Others: Consultation, Collaboration and a Request to Fix a Child

Student Name

Psychology and Addiction Studies Program, Aspen University

PSY 620: Psychological Interactions

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Helping Through Others: Consultation, Collaboration and a Request to Fix a Child

Leah is a licensed psychologist with a community mental health agency in Tucson, Arizona, that contracts with several elementary schools. She, the school and the family in this paper are invented for the course. In September, the principal of Desert Willow Elementary called her about Mateo, an eight-year-old in third grade who calls out, leaves his seat and has twice thrown materials. The principal asked whether Leah could "take him out a couple of times a week and fix him." This paper explains why Leah instead proposed consultation and collaboration, and what those terms mean.

Consultation as Indirect Help

Caplan et al. (1995), revisiting Gerald Caplan's influential typology of mental health consultation, describe consultation as an interaction between two professionals: a consultant, who has specialized knowledge, and a consultee, who has a work problem involving a client. The consultant helps the consultee handle the problem more effectively, and the consultee remains responsible for the client and free to accept or reject the consultant's suggestions. The relationship is usually voluntary and nonhierarchical, which separates it from supervision. Caplan's typology distinguished consultation focused on a particular client, consultation focused on the consultee's own difficulties with a case and consultation focused on programs or administration. The consultee's difficulties might stem from lack of knowledge, skill, confidence or professional objectivity.

In Mateo's case, the consultee is his teacher, Gloria, and the client is Mateo. The help flows indirectly: if Leah helps Gloria understand and respond to Mateo's behavior, Mateo benefits every hour he is in class, not only during sessions with Leah, and Gloria gains skills she can use with other students.

Collaboration

Sheridan and Kratochwill (2008) describe conjoint behavioral consultation, a model in which parents and teachers work together with a consultant to address a child's needs across home and school. Rather than the consultant advising one consultee, families and educators share responsibility for identifying the problem, planning and carrying out the response and judging progress. The model rests on the idea that children's behavior is shaped in more than one setting and that consistent responses across home and school help more than efforts in one setting alone.

Three Ways of Helping

Why Indirect Help Can Reach Further

The logic of indirect service is partly arithmetic. A psychologist who sees one child for an hour a week reaches that child for an hour. A teacher who learns to prevent and respond to disruptive behavior uses that learning with every child she teaches, this year and in later years. Consultation also respects the expertise teachers already hold about their classrooms, which a consultant visiting twice a week cannot match.

Does Consultation Work?

Medway and Updyke (1985) pooled the controlled consultation studies then available, from schools and other settings, in a meta-analysis. They found that consultation produced positive effects both on consultees, such as changes in teachers' knowledge, attitudes and practices, and on clients, such as improvements in children's behavior and achievement. The effects were consistent across the major models of consultation they examined. The finding supports the logic of indirect service: helping the adults who work with a child can improve outcomes for the child.

Entry and Contracting

Consultation begins before any problem-solving, with entry into the setting and agreement on the work. Leah's first task was to clarify who wanted help and with what. The principal had made the request, but Gloria would be the consultee, and her willingness was essential, since consultation cannot be imposed. Leah met with Gloria to learn how she saw the situation and whether she wanted to work together. She also explained what consultation would and would not involve: regular meetings, observation in the classroom with Gloria's agreement and joint planning, but not Leah taking over Gloria's role or reporting on Gloria's teaching to the principal. Confidentiality boundaries were agreed, including what the principal would be told.

Why Not Direct Service?

Individual sessions with Mateo would not be wrong in every case, and some children need them. But the request rested on an assumption that the problem lived inside Mateo and could be removed from the classroom for repair. His behavior happened in a particular room, at particular times, with particular adults and demands. A child who learns new skills in an office may not use them in a class where nothing else has changed. And the school would lose the chance to build Gloria's capacity to handle similar behavior from other students in future years.

Who Else Is Involved

Several people besides Gloria and Mateo have a stake. The principal requested help and has authority over discipline decisions such as office referrals. Mateo's mother, Ana, knows him better than anyone at school and sees him in settings the school does not. The school counselor, who had met Mateo twice, holds useful information. Leah mapped these relationships early so that the consultation would not unintentionally exclude someone whose cooperation it later needed.

Reframing the Request

Leah proposed a different arrangement from the one requested. She would consult with Gloria for six weeks, observe Mateo in class twice, and, with the school's agreement, invite Mateo's mother, Ana, to join a joint planning meeting, so that home and school could act consistently. If the classroom work showed that Mateo needed individual services, such as an evaluation or counseling, Leah would help the school and family arrange them. The principal agreed, somewhat reluctantly, after Leah explained the evidence that working through the teacher would reach Mateo more of the day.

Conclusion

Consultation is an indirect service in which a consultant helps a consultee serve a client, with the consultee keeping responsibility, as Caplan and colleagues describe. Collaboration, as Sheridan and Kratochwill describe it, shares that responsibility among families, schools and the consultant. Medway and Updyke's meta-analysis shows that consultation can benefit both consultees and clients. In Mateo's case, reframing a request to fix a child into consultation with his teacher and collaboration with his mother puts help where he spends his days.

References

Caplan, G., Caplan, R. B., & Erchul, W. P. (1995). A contemporary view of mental health consultation: Comments on "Types of mental health consultation" by Gerald Caplan (1963). Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 6(1), 23-30. https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532768xjepc0601_2

Medway, F. J., & Updyke, J. F. (1985). Meta-analysis of consultation outcome studies. American Journal of Community Psychology, 13(5), 489-505. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00923263

Sheridan, S. M., & Kratochwill, T. R. (2008). Conjoint behavioral consultation: Promoting family-school connections and interventions (2nd ed.). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-71248-2