Family Session
Hey Everyone -
I'm curious if anyone would mind sharing how they handle family sessions in SP? I'm just coming across this for the first time and am unsure if I should create each family member as a client and be doing notes and scheduling for each, or just create one client name "Smith Family" or something like that? Would love to hear what others do.
Thanks!
Karissa
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This is a major problem for me. Currently I use the person responsible for payment as the primary client on SP, although another family member might me the identified client (IP). There is not a way, that I have discovered, to link household members or session attendees beyond linking a couple. I try to reference on the primary client's clinical record's remarks concerning all family members and session attendees.
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I'm glad you asked this question as I am a family therapist and work primarily with teens and young adults who often have family sessions rather than individual sessions. If the person is a minor I make a client portal for the teen and use the parent's e-mail as the client portal access e-mail. All the documents are then signed by the parent/guardian. I recently have a session scheduled with a family and the clients I will be seeing will primarily be siblings so I plan on having all the siblings sign a printed consent form that I will upload and do documentation under each kiddo (I guess, I'm not really sure a better way to do this). I surely wish SP would get on board with LMFT's soon!
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Hi Kathleen,
Here's how you can set up a minor client with 2 parental contacts:
- Go to the minor client's profile page > click Edit beneath their name.
- Click the Contacts tab > click +Add Contact.
- If a parent has an existing profile in your account, either as a client or as a contact on another profile, use the search box to search for and pull up the existing profile. Otherwise, click +New Contact.
- Follow the prompts to complete and save the profile.
To share documentation with the client, with either or both contacts, or with everyone, click Share on the top right of the client's profile. You'll be prompted to select the party (or parties) you wish to share documentation with. Each party will only see the documentation you have shared directly with them.
To learn more about this feature, feel free to check out this Help Center guide: Enhanced Client Management for Minors.
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Hi Melody,
Our Enhanced Client Management for Couples will support Telehealth sessions with 2 clients plus a clinician. While I don't have an ETA for you on our group Telehealth feature, we are actively working on this enhancement.
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So what is the suggested workaround/workflow for when you have two adult family members (in my case, siblings) and you are doing telehealth?
Do you enter in each sibling as a client and then schedule the session under the primary client?
Do you enter primary client and then put the other adult sibling under as one of their contacts? If you grant access to that contact, do they see everything the primary client sees in their portal? How do you do this?
Do both adults need to sign the consent or only the primary client? As siblings, they are related but (thankfully :) not married. Help! Thank you!
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Hi Katharine,
If you're seeing two family members together in a two-person session, please feel free to use our Enhanced Client Management for Couples feature. This will allow you to schedule appointments with them together, add notes for their combined sessions, and share the billing. With this feature, each person only sees the documentation that you have shared directly with them.
When you add a Contact to a client's profile, that allows the contact to receive appointment reminders for the client and to see appointments and billing information, depending on the settings you enable, but you will not be able to enter clinical documentation for the contact or set up a group Telehealth session.
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Katharine,
I also have a family of adult siblings. So far, I've created a family intake form with the 'person of contact' as the main contact information, email and payments. I've listed under the main contact, the other contact(s) information. This works for me becaue I am not seeing anyone on an individual basis. My notes are quite long because there are 5 siblings and parents. This is the only way that I could think about doing this, being that it is a family unit/system. So far, so good!
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If SP isn't working on creating a solution for having sessions with more than two adult clients in a single session, then they need to be. I work in addiction where family sessions with more than two adults is fairly common. I have been managing with my own work around, but it is not ideal. For example, I have new clients who are two adult sisters. I have to set them up as a "couple" when they obviously are not. I hope a solution to this issue comes sooner than later. Thank you.
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I commented on this three years ago. I am a family therapist and I find Simple Practice extremely difficult to use when I am try to manage a family or a household. Because this practice software is endorsed by AAMFT I am expecting a more marriage and family oriented product. I am also hoping that a solution to this issue is coming sooner than later.
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We can do a variety of things to make "Simple" work to in order to have family sessions. We really "should" not have to. For example, I need intake paperwork to include signed informed consent(s). for each session participant. We are paying too much money to have patchwork ERs. The Simple Practice staff need to be more mindful of and accommodating for systemic therapists.
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Absolutely, it is not only time consuming to change ERs but also disruptive. I left Simple Practice about 4 years ago around this same concern, I came back when AAMFT became part of the marketing. Not much has changed to accommodate Systemic Family Therapy needs.. A big disappointment for me, along with not being able to use the same email address (that's an annoying problem).. I am curious to find out if the Simple Practice developer are planning to accommodate Family systems requirements in the software updates, and if not, why not?
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I keep looking at all of the "new" things SP offers and how useless they are to me! i would much rather be able to schedule a collateral family session than be able to see my client demographics or limit how many clients schedule in a day! this is a MAJOR shortfall - PLEASE DO BETTER simple practice! especially with these rate hikes you just made!
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I came to this thread looking for a solution and am frustrated to see that this has been an unresolved issue for years. I really need to set up a family as the unit of treatment in Simple Practice to clarify confidentiality boundaries since families differ from individual cases. Work-arounds make for not only sloppy, but unethical/illegal file keeping. :(
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yes, not easy. You can create each adult as a contact in the family system and organize what type of access eash has to the portal (apts etc). I've sent the informed consents etc...to all adult members through the system. For divorced families, SP told me that each person has their own sign in and can only see what has been shared with them, and not the other members. Also the contacts cannot view the other members message's through the message system so there is privacy between family adult members if needed. (such as in divorce). sigh. The billing is the problem because I can't find a way to charge different members, i.e. divorced parents of children...many times one pays one week and the other pays the other week. The invoices automatically are sent to the main contact. So I've had to edit, change 'responsible party' save, download and upload in the other parents portal then share. whew.
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I did another family session via Zoom yesterday and continue to be infuriated by this. My old EHR- Theranest, was nowhere near as user friendly as SP, but even they were able to accomodate a family session.
Why are we not able to get an answer from SP on this? IS this being worked on? helloooooo?????
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