Play More and Stress Less: Keys for Private Practice
| LEIGH ELLEN MAGNESS, MSW, LCSW, RPT-S I
private practice. Would clients come? Would I be able to afford to pay salary from this venture? Were my clinical skills good enough for me to stand on my own outside of the support, structure, and referrals from the agency?
friendly space where we could each run our individual child practices. The goal for the space was for it to feel inviting to all, and for children to know they could be themselves, even if that meant being loud or messy. We decided that autonomy is important, and it carries less liability, so other therapists run their own practices in this space. Two other child hierarchy, therapists structured their practices how they felt best for them. We offered in-house business consults, professional support, and encouragement to any therapist renting our space who desired it. As the practice grew, four other independent therapists created their own practices in our space. When the practice expanded into the unit next door, we purchased both buildings.
The practice now receives more referrals than the eight therapists can manage, and potential clients with urgent needs are referred to other community resources. In 2018, the practice expanded to create a co-op space for mental health and other complementary health practitioners who want to launch a new practice or to practice part-time with minimal learned a lot along the way. These suggestions are our keys to creating play therapy private practice success, which may be helpful to therapists considering launching private practices of their own.
Make Informed Decisions The upside of private practice is the flexibility, minimal bureaucracy, few formal rules to follow, therapist choice in client populations, and therapist autonomy – being one’s own boss. The downside is potential isolation if supports are not built into place; the lack of paid sick or vacation days; the private practice owner is the only one responsible for clinical and
business decisions. That can be daunting when beginning, and probably has kept many play therapists from starting their own private practices (Newman, 2017).
To ensure therapists make informed decisions when beginning a play therapy practice, they may interview other therapists to learn about all aspects of practice. Other potential information outlets include networking with friends and colleagues to learn how they grant themselves leave time or how they balance their time between seeing clients and performing administrative duties; joining a mental health private practitioners’ group on social media; and searching for information online. A play therapy private practice is about much more than providing play sessions, and making informed decisions eliminates this surprise.
Maintain Firm Boundaries Boundaries often become more important for private practitioners than they may be for therapists in agency positions. The lack of structure, accountability, and distance between the clinical and business sides of private practice make setting clear boundaries a necessary and important part of the work (Herlihy & Gorley, 2015). When beginning a practice, it may be tempting for a therapist to see any client who wants therapeutic services, even when if the requested services fall outside of the therapist’s scope of practice, or when clients insist that they can only come on a day when the therapist does not offer sessions, or when the therapy would create a dual relationship.
Creating and maintaining boundaries around what is appropriate for the business and what is best practice helps the therapist create a good clinical structure, enforces a practice of self-care, and models appropriate academic), and then maintaining those boundaries once set, will be an important part of making a private practice run smoothly and under the best possible conditions for clients and therapists. When therapists allow boundaries to soften, the work has a higher likelihood of getting messy; and the therapist in private practice is the only one responsible for managing and alleviating the hardships created.
www.a4pt.org | June 2018 | PLAYTHERAPY | 5
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