How Should I Log a Counseling Session?

This article explains how third party providers should log counseling services provided per students' related services on their IEPs.

The Student Log has recently been updated to include a new "Related Services" category.  Going forward, therapists providing counseling services should use the new counseling options when logging direct related services.  Listed below are the components used to create a log entry to document the provision of counseling services on students' IEPs.

• About: Student
• System: Student
• Location: School Location (Default)
• Contact Date: Date and Time of Contact
• Contact Type: Select the appropriate contact type used to communicate with the 
  student/caretaker and or deliver services. All successful and attempted contacts and 
  service delivery must be logged. Ensure that you communicate with the school to 
  determine preferred contact types for logging.
  • Phone Call- Successful
  • Phone Call- Left Message
  • Face-to-Face
  • Face-to-Face- Did Not Attend
  • LiveLesson- Individual
  • LiveLesson- Did Not Attend
  • LiveLesson- Group
• Areas and Categories: Related Services
  • Counseling Services - 15 Minutes
  • Counseling Services - 30 Minutes
  • Counseling Services - 45 Minutes
  • Counseling Services - 60 Minutes 
• Contactees: Student, Learning Coach, and/or Caretaker
• Comments: Use this area to document the provision of related services. Details should 
  include the duration, service type, and goals addressed.

Reminders

• If the session lasted longer than the options provided, you may select more than one, for example, selecting "Counseling - 15 minutes" and "Counseling - 60 minutes" for a session that lasted 75 minutes.
• If you were evaluating the student, you should use the separate evaluation options in the Special Education category.  You should not use the related services options for an evaluation unless you provided direct therapy AND conducted an evaluation during the session.
• If the student was absent from a scheduled session, you should still log the amount of time for which the student was scheduled.  For a virtual session, you should select "LiveLesson - Did Not Attend" and then the type of service and duration scheduled.

Special Education Vendor Management Data View Fields:

There are two new fields in the Special Education Vendor Management Data View.  These fields automatically display the first date that counseling services were logged this school year and the number of counseling minutes offered in the last 30 days.  These fields are calculated/extended fields that cannot be edited in the data view because they are pulled directly from the log.