PS521 Unit 10 Group Program Proposal Example

After Week Twelve: A PS521 Unit 10 Proposal for a Sixteen-Week Continuing Care Group for Intensive Outpatient Graduates

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

PS521: Group Counseling

Unit 10 Group Program Proposal

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, the program, the figures and every detail of the proposal are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.

The Problem

Over the last two years, of 104 members who completed the twelve-week intensive outpatient program, 53 had no further contact with any treatment service within thirty days. The program's discharge plan refers each graduate to community meetings and offers monthly individual check-ins, but many graduates attend neither. Relapse risk is high in the months after intensive treatment ends, when the structure of three evenings a week disappears.

Purpose

The proposed group would give graduates a weekly place to keep practicing what they learned, to bring early warning signs and lapses to people who know them and to step down gradually from intensive care. Its goal is to keep at least two-thirds of graduates in some form of treatment for four months after discharge.

Planning Under Best Practice Guidelines

The ASGW best practice guidelines divide group work into planning, performing and processing (Thomas & Pender, 2008). Planning includes a clear statement of the group's purpose, attention to the population and setting, screening, informed consent and an evaluation plan. Performing covers the leader's skills and attention to group process during sessions. Processing includes the leader's reflection after sessions and use of supervision. The proposal follows that structure.

Population and Screening

The group is open to adults who have completed the intensive program within the past thirty days. Each candidate will meet with a leader for a short screening interview to confirm interest, discuss goals and identify needs the group cannot meet, for example a member hearing voices or one so unsafe that they need a higher level of care. Members will sign an informed consent form that explains the group's purpose, schedule, confidentiality agreement and its limits.

Model and Structure

The group will meet weekly for ninety minutes on Wednesday evenings for sixteen weeks, with open, rolling admission so that each new graduating cohort can join. The federal protocol sketches a range of group formats, with teaching and skills groups at one end and interpersonal process groups at the other, and suggests that people with more months of recovery can handle more of the latter (Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, 2005). Our continuing care group will combine both: the first half of each session will be a structured check-in on warning signs, coping and supports, and the second half will be open discussion of whatever members bring, with leaders attending to here-and-now interactions as in the intensive program.

Members will be encouraged to attend at least twelve of the sixteen weeks and may continue for a second sixteen-week period if they and the leaders agree.

Session Outline

Each session follows the same pattern. The first twenty minutes are a round in which each member reports days in recovery, any lapse, one warning sign and one coping step from the past week. The next fifty minutes are open group work. The final twenty minutes close with each member naming a plan for the coming week and one person they will contact. Every fourth session includes a short skills topic chosen by the members, such as handling holidays, returning to work or repairing family relationships.

Leadership

The group will be led by one licensed counselor and one co-facilitator, with the program's peer volunteer attending as a model of longer-term recovery. After every session the two leaders will debrief briefly, and once a month they will take the group to clinical supervision, as the guidelines' processing stage recommends.

A continuing care group succeeds if graduates keep coming when nothing requires them to; the design has to make attending easier than staying home.

Ethics and Confidentiality

Members will agree to keep what is said in group confidential, and leaders will explain that leaders cannot guarantee other members' compliance. Group records fall under Part 2, and nothing will be released with employers, courts or family without written consent. A lapse never costs a member their seat. Anyone who shows up under the influence goes home safely that night and hears from a leader by the next morning, the same practice the intensive program uses.

Why a Group Format

Burlingame et al. (2016) found that group and individual formats produce equivalent outcomes when treatments, patients and doses are matched, and a 2019 meta-analysis of randomized trials found small but significant effects of group therapy on abstinence for substance use disorders, along with moderate effects on anxiety and depression (Lo Coco et al., 2019). With two counselors, a group can serve up to twelve graduates a week in ninety minutes, which individual sessions could not match.

Evaluation

Measures will be chosen before the group starts. The primary outcome is the proportion of graduates who attend at least eight sessions in the first sixteen weeks. Secondary outcomes include urine test results at monthly check-ins, depression scores and members' ratings of the group's usefulness. Results will be compared with the program's existing thirty-day disconnection rate, and the program director will review them at six and twelve months.

Budget and Feasibility

The group requires one and a half counselor hours a week for sessions plus a quarter hour for debriefing, a room the hospital already provides in the evenings and printed materials. Sessions will be billed as group therapy under members' insurance or the state's public coverage.

Conclusion

The proposed continuing care group addresses a measurable problem, the loss of half of graduates within a month, with a structure built on the ASGW guidelines, the group types described in the federal protocol and evidence that group formats are effective and efficient. Its evaluation plan will show within a year whether it keeps graduates connected.

References

Burlingame, G. M., Seebeck, J. D., Janis, R. A., Whitcomb, K. E., Barkowski, S., Rosendahl, J., & Strauss, B. (2016). Outcome differences between individual and group formats when identical and nonidentical treatments, patients, and doses are compared: A 25-year meta-analytic perspective. Psychotherapy, 53(4), 446-461. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000090

Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. (2005). Substance abuse treatment: Group therapy (Treatment Improvement Protocol Series, No. 41; HHS Publication No. SMA 05-3991). Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Lo Coco, G., Melchiori, F., Oieni, V., Infurna, M. R., Strauss, B., Schwartze, D., Rosendahl, J., & Gullo, S. (2019). Group treatment for substance use disorder in adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized-controlled trials. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 99, 104-116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2019.01.016

Thomas, R. V., & Pender, D. A. (2008). Association for Specialists in Group Work: Best practice guidelines 2007 revisions. The Journal for Specialists in Group Work, 33(2), 111-117. https://doi.org/10.1080/01933920801971184