Tjane Health portal

The Family Is the Unit of Work

Module 16: Adult PRP vs. Minor PRP: Practice Differences · Lesson 1 of 3

13 min Back to module

Story opener

Thursday, 4:40 p.m. A participant is sitting across from you, your supervisor wants three notes before you leave, and the answer you need is not in any binder on the shelf. This lesson is the part of the job nobody handed you in orientation.

Learning objectives

  • Be able to assess caregiver capacity as a formal domain
  • Be able to coach caregiver routines, do not replace them

Lesson

With minors, caregiver skill often produces more change than youth skill.

Assess the caregiver's routines, capacity, and stress alongside the youth's functioning. Teaching a caregiver to run a consistent morning routine can outperform ten sessions with the child.

Align with the family's discipline and communication norms where safe, and coach adjustments rather than imposing a foreign system.

Maryland guidance & authority labels

Every statement below is labeled so you know what is binding regulation, what is only proposed, what is professional guidance, and what is our house standard.

  • COMAR — current

    Minor PRP requires coordination with the school and legal guardian consent, with guardian involvement documented in the plan.

  • Internal best practice

    Write minor objectives so a teacher, a guardian, and the youth can each say what success looks like.

Common mistakes

  • Describing what you did without describing what the participant did.

    Do this instead — Record the intervention and the participant's observable response to it.

  • Treating regulation as a filing chore separate from practice.

    Do this instead — Let the required elements shape the session itself, so documentation writes itself.

Practical examples

Practical example

Instead of 'met with participant to discuss goals,' write: 'Reviewed the transportation objective; participant identified the #22 route unassisted and named one back-up plan. Verbal prompt needed once. Next session: practice the transfer at Mondawmin.'

Key takeaways

  • Assess caregiver capacity as a formal domain
  • Coach caregiver routines, do not replace them

Reflection prompts

  1. 1Which part of this lesson describes something you are already doing differently in practice?
  2. 2What would an auditor see in your last five notes that contradicts this standard?

Bring your answers to supervision — the case-study workspace in this module saves written notes to your account.

Knowledge check

4 questions drawn from a bank of 7 · 75% to pass · instant feedback on every answer

1. In minor PRP, a frequent highest-yield intervention target is:

2. Which statement is a key takeaway from "The Family Is the Unit of Work"?

3. How should you treat this statement? "Minor PRP requires coordination with the school and legal guardian consent, with guardian involvement documented in the plan."

4. Which additional point does "The Family Is the Unit of Work" emphasize?