Big Idea 1 - Choice

Choice in CAPA is:

Choice is about giving our young people and families as much choice as we can to engage them in our service and their change, working together on issues that matter to them. The key philosophy of CAPA is to have the user’s viewpoint and wishes at the centre of what we do. Our aim is to do this through a stance of ‘facilitator with expertise’ in all contacts. Thus their choices which lead to care plans, partnership goals and enhanced task alliance are crucial.

We aim to make it feel collaborative, accessible, useful and facilitative. This means using ordinary everyday language, working to understand the family’s view of their world and problems. We reach a shared understanding and agree goals to work on. We try to avoid making the experience of coming to CAMHS one of expectantly visiting an expert who asks questions and delivers a verdict to a rather passive family.

We make sure we always focus on:

This applies as much after the 50th session or the first. Choice appointments are our term for the first contact the young person and family have with the service. The aims of the Choice appointment are to build the therapeutic alliance by:

The Choice appointment experience should thus be one that builds a therapeutic and task alliance. We do this by developing a joint understanding of the problem with choices made as to future actions - reaching a Choice Point. This appointment can take as short or as long as it needs to reach a Choice Point. In fact, further Choice appointments need to be offered if the clinician and family cannot reach a Choice Point – perhaps because a key person wasn’t there. This whole stance we call working in a Choice framework and it is one of the 11 Key Components of CAPA.