The below is a general guide of what is considered Direct Client Contact hours and Client Related hours. Please refer to your Placement Handbooks for more information and/or contact your Placement Coordinator for further clarification.
Total placement hours are typically calculated as a combination of direct client hours, client-related activity and supervision hours. These must all be appropriately logged in a CMI-approved placement and under CMI-approved supervision. Keep your logbook up to date as any unlogged hours will not be considered as part of minimum requirements.
Direct Client Contact (CC)
Face to Face Client contact (CC) is defined as time that focuses on providing psychological services to the client for the client’s benefit. In many cases, clients will be an individual, couple or group involved in the therapeutic process. However, clients may also be stakeholders involved in client care (e.g. family member/s; members of a multidisciplinary treatment team; a referring GP) or an organisation (e.g. provision of psych-education to other stakeholders involved in client care).
Client contact can include a range of activities, such as:
- Conducting assessment or therapy sessions for individuals, couples or families.
- Conducting psychometric testing.
- Conducting in-person or telephone intake interviews.
- Providing psychometric assessment feedback.
- Co-facilitating assessment or treatment sessions with another therapist (co-therapy); need to have an active role, does NOT include passive observation.
- Facilitating group treatment sessions.
- Liaising with client’s family members (e.g., to collect information or give feedback about an assessment).
- Delivering a formal presentation to placement entity’s clients or other stakeholders regarding psychologically-related material (e.g., sharing a Conceptualisation).
- Consulting with other professionals (e.g., acute care team, psychiatrist, case worker, teacher, multidisciplinary team) about the management of a client or gathering clinically relevant information (e.g., ward rounds, clinical meetings, phone or in-person discussion of impressions/ diagnosis/ treatment/ follow-up); does NOT include supervision sessions.
- Communicating with clients via telephone/ Teams that is NOT for administrative purposes (e.g., phone review/ counselling).
(Sourced from Mark Donovan at UoW)
“Client Contact” is defined as:
Any situation where the Student actively utilises their clinical skills and knowledge for the direct or indirect assessment and or intervention of a client. Such situations that would be considered client contact would include (but not limited to):
- Face to face meeting with a client
- Telephone calls with a client lasting more than 15 minutes (e.g. telephone counselling, clinical interview, follow up calls)
- Observational assessments
- Liaison with family members/carers, teachers, or other professionals related to the client
- Provision of psychoeducation regarding a client to other stakeholders involved in client care
- Active participation in stakeholder/case conference meetings whereby assessment and /or advocacy for the client was an integral component of the Student’s participation
- Joint sessions between the Student and another professional or supervisor in which the student is an active participant in the clinical process of the session.
(Sourced from Kendall Coburn at Griffith’s University)
Client Related Activities (CR)
Client-related activity (CR) is defined as all other tasks involved in the management and execution of clinical activities within a working context/or working day.Client-related can include a range of activities, such as (but are not limited to):
- Reading/writing case/file notes
- Organising future appointments
- Scoring test material
- Writing reports
- Preparing for client contact supervision
- Organisational project
- Observation of clinical interviews by other professionals (whereby the client is not necessarily a client of the student), and the student does not participate in the interview.
- Preparation of logbooks- you can claim 1-1/2 hours
Supervision
Supervision is the process of guiding students in their acquisition of graduate competencies through their direct client activities in a workplace or a simulated learning environment. It can be undertaken either individually or in a group. Supervision may use a range of methodologies that allow for face-to-face communication either in person or electronically, and may only be logged when provided by their allocated individual and group supervisors. Appropriate and accurately logged supervision hours can contribute to the total placement hours completed as part of minimum requirements.