The Importance of Caregiver Involvement in Complex Cases
Collaborative care is a key principle in social work practice. Collaborative care draws from our understanding that problems do not exist in a vacuum so neither can our solutions. The clients that we serve and the problems that we treat are complex and multifaceted, so we too need to use multiple systems and supports to be most effective. Casebook shares in their blog two examples of how collaborating with other systems can affect client outcomes — How Collaborations Can Help You Improve Outcomes and The Role of Community Partnerships in Reducing Recidivism.
Non-professional supports, especially informal or family caregivers, are also a vital part of a client’s collaborative care team. Many trauma-informed practices include psychoeducation for caregivers and research has found that providing psychoeducation to caregivers is a best practice, especially in complex cases such as when a client has psychosis.2,3,4 I’ve experienced first-hand how caregiver involvement and psychoeducation for caregivers can turnaround a struggling case. Today I’m going to share a few tips that I’ve learned about improving psychoeducation for caregivers.
How to Improve Psychoeducation for Caregivers in Order to Increase Collaborative Care
Psychoeducation for caregivers has been shown to improve outcomes both for clients and for their caregivers.1 I’ve picked up these 3 tips to be most effective when using psychoeducation for caregivers:
- Personalize It
Often psychoeducation for caregivers consists of an educational handout. While visual aids such as handouts can be helpful, you always want to make sure that caregivers understand the relationship between the information being shared and how it applies to their loved one. If providing a caregiver psychoeducation about depression for example, it’s far more helpful to describe how the client’s specific behaviors are affected by their depression as opposed to providing a generic handout on the symptoms of depression. When I’ve worked with complex cases, such as a client of Indigenous descent who had depression and anxiety, their caregiver had a different cultural understanding of mental health but once I focused on specific impacts for the client, such as describing how the client’s anxiety makes them afraid to drive, we understood one another better and the psychoeducation was received. With Casebook’s ability to track specific client behaviors and caregiver preferences, personalizing psychoeducation becomes more efficient and actionable.
- Use the Caregiver’s Language
We tend to make many assumptions about caregivers unfortunately, including assumptions about their language preferences, their educational status, and their learning style. Trauma-informed practices have taught us the importance of asking questions in collaborative care rather than assuming. Sometimes the language of our psychoeducation needs to be literally changed (e.g. from English to Spanish) and other times the presentation or word choice needs to be adjusted for caregivers to understand. I had a client, for example, whose caregiver needed a visual vs. verbal explanation of how the client’s attendance affected their outcomes. Once I showed the caregiver a graph of the sessions that the client kept vs. the time that they’d been enrolled, the caregiver understood clearer the client’s outcomes and made a greater commitment to helping the client keep their appointments.
- Make it Relevant
The more relevant and applicable psychoeducation for caregivers is, the more likely it is to be used. Targeting relevant caregiver psychoeducation is especially important in complex cases which often include a lot of information and lengthy caserecords, but not all of the information is needed nor appropriate at times to be shared. You want to focus on the data that’s most helpful. When I worked with a client who had over 6 previous mental health diagnoses, it was less important for his caregiver to understand the history of each diagnosis, and more important for the caregiver to understand how the client’s current diagnosis was impacting his primary goal of improving his hygiene. Casebook’s tools streamline data-sharing and personalization for caregivers.
Tools that Assist with Psychoeducation for Caregivers
Collaborative care and psychoeducation for caregivers are necessities when navigating complex cases. Fortunately, there are tools such as Casebook that can help you be more effective when providing caregiver psychoeducation. Casebook enables personalized profiles for clients and caregivers, including language preferences. You’re also able to personalize forms, upload attachments, and to track specific data over time. Casebook offers a centralized place for client information and easy data-sharing with caregivers and other providers. Get your free consultation today.
References:
1 Hansen, N. H., Bjerrekær, L., Pallesen, K. J., Juul, L., & Fjorback, L. O. (2022). The effect of mental health interventions on psychological distress for informal caregivers of people with mental illness: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in psychiatry, 13, 949066. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.949066
2 Lukens, E. P., & McFarlane, W. R. (2006). Psychoeducation as Evidence-Based Practice: Considerations for Practice, Research, and Policy. In A. R. Roberts & K. R. Yeager (Eds.), Foundations of evidence-based social work practice (pp. 291–313). Oxford University Press.
3 National Child Traumatic Stress Network. (2017). Family engagement and involvement in trauma mental health treatment. National Child Traumatic Stress Network. https://www.nctsn.org/sites/default/files/resources/fact-sheet/cac_family_engagement_and_involvement_in_trauma_mental_health.pdf4 Sin, J., Gillard, S., Spain, D., Cornelius, V., Chen, T., & Henderson, C. (2017). Effectiveness of psychoeducational interventions for family carers of people with psychosis: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Clinical psychology review, 56, 13–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2017.05.002
