This is our raw, irreverent guide on what in our humble opinion education consultants and case managers should be doing right now to provide the highest quality service to you. This list is valid regardless of the type of mental, behavioral health or substance abuse treatment you or your loved one is receiving (eg. therapeutic wilderness program, therapeutic boarding school, individual outpatient therapy, psychological assessment). If you go through the list and your well-compensated professional is providing you with anything less than what we discuss below, copy and paste this into an email and let them know you’ll keep them hired only if they get on board.
1. Consistent Contact
When we first started Fonthill, we were so focused on accomplishing all the goals and objectives we developed with parents and families that we failed to keep everyone informed and on the same page. We learned from our mistakes that weekly contact (at a minimum) is essential. Your education consultant / case manager should be providing you (and the whole team) with regular email or text updates. These are not updates you should need to respond to, just information letting you know an application was submitted, insurance claim was accepted or that the psychologist doing your son’s assessment will be available about 30 minutes earlier if that works for you. Parents count on us to keep them informed.
2. Proactive Planning
Here is another mistake we made. Our teams are experts on working with behavioral acting out, crisis, intervention, parenting, and families but what we quickly learned we needed to do just as well was developing a treatment plan that included more than just what the parents thought was the issue. We expanded our planning WAY beyond what we estimated our involvement to be so that after we had worked ourselves out of a job (…another hallmark of good work) the family had a set of instructions, a road map, a guide if you will on who should be doing what and by when. Make sure that your education consultant / case manager is developing a plan that considers the big picture since treatment and life do not stop when the professional’s final payment is received. Seriously, they should be mapping out way far into the future to mitigate obstacles and pot-holes you are not even thinking of (eg. Financial literacy for your son entering substance abuse treatment).
3. Saying ‘No’
A really good way to determine if your education consultant / case manager is worth their weight in gold (…or Rhodium) is how often they say ‘no’ to 1. New Clients, 2. Current Clients and 3. Professionals on your team.
Let me explain. New clients – We make it very clear to perspective clients that not everyone that contacts us becomes a client. We could become the Wal-Mart of family services but quality would go WAY down. Education consulting, case management, family counseling and our parent education and consulting would become commodities. Many desperate professionals say ‘yes’ when leads are low and expenses are high (…McMansions are cheap ya know). Current clients – A really valuable and important education consultant and case manager is hired to set a course, develop a plan and make sure the heading if followed. Parents often, with the best intentions, attempt to deviate from the course when kids get unruly or their own fears start to percolate. Professionals – One of our most important jobs as case managers is working out issues behind the scenes (eg. Setting a limit on the ‘add-ons’ a program may want to push on parents). Being able to effectively and respectfully say ‘no’ to other professionals is an essential skill that should be in your case manager’s repertoire.
4. Billing Fairly
Have you ever lost your mind when you looked over your hospital bill from the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center that showed that the Aspirin they gave you cost $1000? Yeah, we don’t like that either. We think billing should be fair and transparent. There are many, many families that we work with that make a bazillion dollars. There are also just as many families that are have very modest incomes. We charge the same for them all and we are upfront with our costs. We also don’t think it’s appropriate to gouge our clients with ridiculous initial consultation fees ($5,000 for an initial meeting? Get real.) We also don’t like contracts for X number of months. Life happens and we know families sometimes need to make drastic changes. Being on the hook for a service that’s supposed to solve problems and not create new ones is important to consider when signing up with an education consultant or case manager. We recommend the shortest term necessary with flexibility built in. For instance, rather than expecting payment everytime we meet, we invoice clients monthly for the work completed (…not for the upcoming month like a landlord). Make sure you understand your bill and that all the expenses are for things you agreed to.
5. Maintaining Boundaries
Oh this one really gets us frustrated. To be able to have the healthiest working relationship with your education consultant and case manager they should constantly maintain professional boundaries similar to Licensed Professional Counselors – No dual roles (eg. Your professional is not also your CPA) and No merging of personal/professional relationships (eg. Your professional is not discussing non-work related issues). This may seem like small stuff but, think about it this way. You hired this person to provide objective analysis and recommendations to advance your family through some obstacle. This creates what in mental health parlance is referred to as a power differential. A power differential is when one party has greater power than the other (eg. Judge vs. defendant). In this case, the professional has power over the parents because the parents are in a vulnerable position, meaning they are counting on advice, but also relying on the professional to protect their confidential information, reputation as well as their emotional and psychological health. If your education consultant has crossed any line that’s not clearly stated in their scope of service, consider talking with them directly and asking them to respect the professional relationship you want with them by limiting the personal sharing and interaction. It may feel uncomfortable, but consider this – what happens if you are not happy with something they did? What happens if the treatment program they recommended turns out to be crap? It’s much easier to confront someone who has maintained professional boundaries throughout the process.
This list is not exhaustive but a starting point to ensure you have some reasonable expectations of what to expect in your relationship with an education consultant/case manager. Contact us at Fonthill if you need more help or if you’re not sure how to best use your current professional support.