ARE WE TOO PRESCRIPTIVE IN THE SERVICES WE PROVIDE?

In some areas it would seem so.  In general business it would not make sense to produce a product or service that we think is great but the customers don’t.  Most successful businesses would do lots of market research to see what their proposed customer base wanted before investing resources.  So why then does it make sense to keep insisting that people want what they blatantly don’t. 

In my profession as a Counsellor/Psychotherapist, my experience of interacting with some Counselling Agencies and mental health providers is that some (hopefully a minority) can be very prescriptive and unfortunately not generally client focussed.   We are told the ‘optimum’ amount of sessions we should provide our clients and for therapy to be effective it must be weekly.  My Question is – how can it be so prescriptive when we are all different? 

My belief as a private practitioner is that anyone who is seeking Therapy should be treated as an individual.  Sometimes people just want to have a single session in a safe space to sort their thoughts out.  Sometimes they need weekly sessions to help them feel empowered to affect change for themselves.  Sometimes they need more intensive support (DBT) which includes outside of scheduled sessions.  Sometimes they need to ‘test drive’ some things or struggle to afford weekly sessions and want to meet every 2 weeks.  Sometimes they may be anxious and prefer ‘Walk & Talk’ rather than Online or Face to Face.  The point is that Counselling should be client focussed and not Business or Counsellor focussed.   

The sad thing is that this is not just in Counselling.  We generally seem to be trying to fit people and situations into neat little parcels but unfortunately, it’s not always effective as we are all individuals and in the caring profession we are letting people down if  we being subtly and not so subtly manipulated into providing what people think others need rather than really finding out for real.  A good example of this was highlighted by ‘Four Amigos’ who had all been diagnosed with Dementia and they recited their experience of filling in forms to monitor services they were receiving.  The questions that were asked was if they had got offered ‘such & such’ which mostly they had but they made the point that no one was asking them if what was being offered was what they actually needed or wanted so the system kept giving itself brownie points without actually being effective.

In general business we would not be very successful if we provided what we wanted to make for people without them wanting it.  Why then is it acceptable to provide things that people don’t always find effective – especially if we are in the caring professions.  Shouldn’t we really engage with what is most effective for our clients in whatever field we are in and not what is a good money maker or what ‘seems’ to fit the bill but is in actual fact no more than a tick exercise and usually a total waste of resources?   All just a view I know but unless we raise such ‘taboo’ subjects how will we ever stop the slide into being puppet people thinking we are doing good but in fact are doing our Clients’ a disservice in providing very bland and ineffective solutions? Let’s start a discussion and perhaps a ‘wave’?