For some counsellors, keeping notes from treatment sessions with their therapy clients can be a doddle. For others it’s a constant administrative challenge of managing paper records and updating various databases and other documents, and manually assessing clients’ progress. Not to mention dealing with the ever present risk of losing a highly confidential client file.

When choosing a system make sure you vet it carefully for its security credentials. Some systems are as secure as any used by the NHS and adhere rigorously to the same standards of data safety. If you’re currently using a spreadsheets package, don’t simply swap one insecure system for another.

Online client management systems can be a great way of reducing the administrative burden, helping counsellors and therapists to manage their caseloads more efficiently and keep records as safely as any NHS system.

When choosing an online client management system for counsellors, it really comes down to how you want to manage your client records and what you want a system to do for you. Read our e-book below to help you to understand what to look for in a client management system.

10 things to look for in an online client management system:

1. Recording client session notes safely and simply

2. Record client contact information

3. Ease of booking appointments

4. Self referral

5. Managing your caseload

6. Outcome measures and reporting

7. Generate correspondence

8. Tracking and managing your practice finances

9. Portability

10. Pricing

Get in touch today.

Next month, BABCP, the leading organisation for CBT in the UK and Ireland, will host their annual conference in our beautiful city and we’re very pleased to be participating.

The three day event will take place at the University of Bath from 3-5 September, beginning on Tuesday with a choice of 12 full-day workshops, followed by 2 packed out days featuring a wide range of skills classes, keynote talks, roundtables, panel discussions and poster presentations.

As part of this year’s conference, Mayden is sponsoring one of the full day workshops: Revolution in Mental Health Service Delivery: The Evolution of Low Intensity CBT. This is a special event for all professionals who deliver Low Intensity Psychological interventions and will celebrate the contributions of the CBT workforce over the past 10 years, with talks from a number of speakers who contribute to Low Intensity CBT, including David Clark and Paul Farrand.

The agenda focuses around important topics including therapist wellbeing, future CPD needs and progression and development within Low Intensity roles. There will also be an update on the accreditation of the Low Intensity workforce and an opportunity to meet the BABCP Low Intensity Special Interest Group committee.

In addition, we will be exhibiting both our iaptus and bacpac patient management systems at the event, and are excited to share demos and talk to you about the advantages of moving from pen and paper to a robust system that will keep your client notes safe.

Bacpac is our affordable, intuitive, and secure client management software, created for individual or a small practice counsellors and psychological therapists. It contains all the features you need to run a successful and efficient practice.

We’re excited to be offering a 30% discount on the subscription price of bacpac to those that attend.

We’ll also be showcasing iaptus – the leading patient management software for psychological therapies, built alongside our partner services in the NHS IAPT programme to support services providing high volume, low intensity therapy.

Register for your place here and tweet us to let us know when you have your ticket. We look forward to seeing you!

This post is one in a series of guest blogs from bacpac user, psychotherapist, coach and consultant, Barry McInnes, exploring the benefits of recording and analysing outcome measures as part of therapy. Click here to read the first part, second part and third part in the series.

Reason number 2 to for considering taking outcome measures with clients as part of your therapy session…

Measures might well save your (therapy) relationship

The therapeutic relationship which we prize and which figures so highly in successful outcomes is fragile and can be easily damaged.

In a revealing blog post, Tony Rousmaniere recounts how he systematically went about gathering feedback from clients about their experience of therapy with him:

“You understand me thirty percent of the time.”
“I need to you to slow down.”
“I was sad and you cut me off.”

“These words of dissatisfaction are from my clients. They weren’t easy to hear, but they have changed how I practice psychotherapy and have significantly reduced my dropout rate.”

I’m sure we’d all like to think this couldn’t possibly apply to us. On a different blog however, Scott Miller highlights studies which show that in 19-42% of sessions clients report tensions or actual breakdowns in the therapeutic relationship, figures which rise to 41-100% of sessions when trained observers are used to identify ruptures between clients and therapists.

Without measures, can we ever really know how our clients experience us in sessions? Of your last five clients that dropped out, is there anything that you could have anticipated? Anything that, had you had been aware, might have resulted in a different outcome?

Is it possible that using a short measure of how your client experiences sessions with you, like the Session Rating Scale (SRS) or the ARM-5, might help you to better understand and perhaps avoid the unexpected empty chair?

I’d welcome your thoughts and your feedback. Drop me a line by emailing barrymcinnes@virginmedia.com. You can also read more about what works in therapy from a research perspective on my website.

If you are a practising therapist in private practice and would like to contribute to the bacpac blog yourself, please get in touch using the contact form.

This is the third in a series of guest posts from bacpac user, psychotherapist, coach and consultant, Barry McInnes, exploring the benefits of recording and analysing measures as part of therapy. Click here to read the first part and second part in the series.

In my last blog, I introduced 5 compelling reasons to use outcome measures in therapy. Over the next few blogs, I’ll be unpacking each one.

Without further ado, reason number 1…

You may learn something about your client’s experience that you really, really need to know

Most of us see our clients for no more than one hour a week. Our clients experience the remaining 167 hours without us. However comprehensive our assessment of their needs may be, there will be always areas of their experience that are unknown to us, particularly in the early stages of therapy.

Global measures of distress such as the CORE-OM and GHQ-28 enable us to access areas of our clients’ experience that we may not otherwise discover. Some of these aspects may affect their capacity to engage with therapy, especially in the critical early stages.

Take, for example, the client who is chronically sleep deprived, or whose levels of despair and hopelessness may cause them to abandon therapy prematurely. For this client, these symptoms may be such a ‘normal’ part of their existence that they fail to mention them during therapy. As such, these factors escape our attention, but still have the capacity to affect the course of our work with the client.

Collecting outcome measures routinely during treatment could help to bring to the surface something that makes the difference between early termination and a successful outcome.

I’d welcome your thoughts and your feedback – drop me a line by emailing barrymcinnes@virginmedia.com. You can also read more about what works in therapy from a research perspective on my website.

If you are a practising therapist in private practice and would like to contribute to the bacpac blog yourself, please get in touch.

We invited psychotherapist, coach and consultant, Barry McInnes, to write a series of guest blogs exploring the benefits of recording and analysing outcome measures as part of therapy. This is the second of those posts. Click here to read the first blog in this series. 

Before we start talking about the questions of which outcome measures to use and how to incorporate measures into your practice, there are some attitudinal and ideological questions to discuss. Until these are addressed, the “how to…” is going to be largely irrelevant.

I wonder, of the three descriptions that follow, which best describes your current attitude to the merits of using measures in your practice?

1. I’m fully on board

2. I’ve no strong feelings either way

3. I believe measures have no place in the therapy process

If you fall into the first category then the chances are that what follows will be familiar to you. If you fall into the second, perhaps something here may convince you of the benefits of using measures. If you’re in the last category, and have got this far, please at least read the next paragraph before you abandon this blog!

As therapists, we pride ourselves on being open-minded, curious and willing to do what we know works for clients, right? This is true, except, it seems, when it comes to using measures. An Australian study of mental health service clinicians’ attitudes to using measures found that 67% would refuse the use of self-report measures even if they acknowledged that it would lead to better patient outcomes.

I’m probably very much like you in terms of changing my practice. Show me a compelling reason for doing something differently and, all other things being equal, I’ll at least consider it. Otherwise, forget it. In that spirit, below follow some arguments that I find compelling why we should consider using measures if we aren’t already doing so…

1. You may learn something about your client’s experience that you really, really need to know
2. Measures might well save your (therapy) relationship
3. A measure may be the only way you discover the true risk your client is at
4. Clients will likely sense if you’re going ‘through the motions’ so learn to use measures well
5. Therapist self-appraisal is not a reliable measure of effectiveness

Please note that these aren’t simply my opinion – for most there’s a decent body of evidence to back them up. I’ll be delving into each of these arguments in detail in upcoming blogs over the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, I’d welcome your thoughts and your feedback – drop me a line by emailing barrymcinnes@virginmedia.com. You can also read more about what works in therapy from a research perspective on my website.

If you are a practising therapist in private practice and would like to contribute to the bacpac blog yourself, please get in touch.

When I first started in private practice, I used protected word files and folders and locked filing cabinets to store my client notes, but was never completely comfortable with my ability to keep them secure.

I worked for IAPT for 5 years using Mayden’s iaptus patient management system,  and when I trialled bacpac it felt very familiar and easy to use. Most obviously I use bacpac to store my client details and notes, but there are loads more added extras.

To my surprise the calendar and auto-email reminder have been extremely valuable. I first had to get past the usual counsellor doubts about chasing clients or allowing clients to take responsibility for their therapy and appointments. I say surprise because I have never had a client refuse the service. My clients tell me they value the reminders particularly if they have busy or chaotic lives.  A word of caution though: when it comes to booking an appointment, bacpac shows a default time of 9am, so the therapist needs to input the actual appointment time. I’ll leave you to imagine the rest… My excuse is it helps the clients to see me as human and fallible. [Thanks Martyn! We’ve taken this feedback onboard and will be looking to improve the usability around this function.—Dawn, Product Manager]

The calendar also records the fee with the date, and cash flow is summarised in a graph on the home page. There is a facility to set a turnover target and it’s such a good feeling to see the graph tip through the target – it means I can eat!

Further accounting facilities are promised. This seems a logical extension to the service and I look forward to that upgrade.

It is important to me that in the event of my sudden death or serious incapacitation, my wife has minimal hassle from my practice. There is comfort in the knowledge that she only needs to make one call to my supervisor. My supervisor will then lo

g on, access my clients names and addresses and arrange ongoing work if they should so choose it. This is all easily set up within the bacpac system.  I have a contract for this with my clients and with my supervisors. I never want to have to use this service (sorry Mayden!) but it’s important that my obligations to my clients continue in the event of my death or incapacitation.

The fee is reasonable as long as you are getting a reasonable flow of clients. I’m not seeing bacpac being taken up by supervisees starting out in private practice, and wonder whether there could be a reduced fee for a limited service, say up to 4 clients?

Martyn Blair is a counsellor practising and supervising in private practice in Coventry. Martyn has been using bacpac for almost a year. Find out more on his website: www.martynblair.co.uk