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The four steps in the therapeutic recreation process

This is an excerpt from Therapeutic Recreation Leadership and Programming-2nd Edition by Robin Kunstler,Frances Stavola Daly.

The therapeutic recreation process is a dynamic four-step process that reflects contemporary issues and approaches that can affect all disciplines at any point in time. Although the therapeutic recreation (TR) process, which is referred to as the TR or recreational therapy (TR/RT) process, is unique to TR/RT practice, the steps are included in the work of most professional disciplines focused on a person-centered approach to clients’ health and well-being. The four steps in the TR/RT process, also referred to as APIE, are assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation. Each step has several components, so a presentation of the process sometimes includes more than four steps. These are the four basic steps:

1. Assessment of the client and the client’s world
2. Planning of the specific goals or outcomes, objectives, and TR/RT interventions for the client
3. Implementation of the TR/RT plan
4. Evaluation of the client’s progress and revision of the plan, if needed

Some scholars and experts in the field have advocated for adding documentation as a fifth step in the TR/RT process (Long, 2020) and changing the acronym to APIE-D or APIED. Documentation, or the creation of a “written (or electronic) record of the client’s experience in the agency” (Mobily & Ostiguy, 2004, p. 214), is a critical practice that occurs throughout the four steps. For this reason, it may be considered not a separate step in the process but a component of each of the first four steps. Nevertheless, it is an essential, required, and valuable function of the profession. Documentation refers to both the process of creating a document and the final document itself.

The application of the TR/RT process is written and documented in the individual client plan. Depending on the setting, the individual client plan may be known as a treatment plan; a care plan; or a service, education, or program plan. The implementation of the TR/RT process and the design of the individual TR/RT plan are affected by the eight approaches to program planning described in chapter 3 because they reflect ongoing mandates to provide increasingly relevant as well as cost-effective services. Program design is also affected by the laws and regulations that govern TR/RT services, the code of ethics of the profession, and the American Therapeutic Recreation Association (ATRA) or Canadian Therapeutic Recreation Association (CTRA) Standards of Practice.

More Excerpts From Therapeutic Recreation Leadership and Programming-2nd Edition

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