What the thing actually is and why you keep hearing about it
The Child Psychotherapy Treatment Planner is a structured clinical tool that gives therapists a ready-made menu of treatment objectives, interventions, and progress notes for working with children and adolescents. It was first published by Wiley under the "Treatment Planner" series, authored by Andreas Thoresen, Michael J. Malouff, and Robert L. Deibler. The most commonly referenced edition is the Second Edition (2015). It's built around DSM diagnoses — things like ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, separation anxiety, conduct disorder, depression in kids, trauma and PTSD in children, autism spectrum-related concerns — and it maps out specific, measurable treatment goals for each one along with recommended psychotherapy interventions. It is not a diagnosis book. It is not a therapy textbook. It is a planning document that sits between your intake assessment and your actual session work. You open it, find the diagnosis your child client has, and you get a list of objectives and interventions that are roughly evidence-aligned. That is the entire pitch.
How I use The Child Psychotherapy Treatment Planner in a real practice
I pull up the section for the child's presenting diagnosis, I copy three or four of the treatment objectives into my own EMR system, and I adapt the suggested interventions to fit the actual kid sitting in front of me. The planner gives me language I would otherwise spend twenty minutes drafting myself. That part is useful. The problem is that the planner was written by academics who have never sat through a twelve-year-old's meltdown when you ask them to rate their feelings on a scale of one to ten. Here is a specific edge case that comes up more often than you would think: the planner lists interventions for "anxiety in children" that assume a certain level of verbal and cognitive functioning. I had a non-speaking autistic child, age nine, diagnosed with generalized anxiety and obsessive-compulsive features. The planner's intervention menu was almost entirely CBT-based with cognitive restructuring, thought records, and Socratic questioning. None of that works for a kid who communicates through AAC and gets overwhelmed by structured paper tasks. I ended up taking only the objective framework — the measurable goal statements — and rebuilding the intervention column from scratch using behavioral activation, visual schedules, sensory-based regulation strategies, and parent-mediated exposure. The planner gave me the skeleton. I had to put the rest on by hand. That is the honest situation with this tool. It is a starting structure, not a finished treatment plan.
What is inside the planner exactly
Each diagnostic section follows the same layout. You get treatment objectives — these are broad therapeutic goals tied to the diagnosis. Under each objective you get measurable treatment goals, which are specific, observable, and time-bound statements. Then you get a list of psychotherapy interventions, which are therapist actions. Things like teaching coping skills, modeling behavior, conducting behavioral experiments, assigning homework, using relaxation training, involving parents in sessions, and so on. Some editions also include progress note templates and session documentation language that you can adapt. The interventions are grouped by theoretical orientation. You will see Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques, Behavioral techniques, Psychodynamic techniques, Play Therapy techniques, Family Therapy interventions, and sometimes Eclectic or Integrative options. That structure is useful because it forces you to think beyond one modality, even if most of us only actually use two or three of those categories in practice with any given child.
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How to actually build a treatment plan from it
Step one is identifying the correct DSM diagnosis or diagnostic combination. The planner organizes by diagnosis, not by presenting complaint. If your child presents with bedtime refusal and nighttime anxiety, you do not look under "sleep problems." You look under anxiety disorders and then cross-reference wherever the planner connects to family dynamics or behavioral components. Step two is selecting three to five treatment objectives maximum. I have seen clinicians copy entire pages into a treatment plan and send it to insurers. That does not work. Insurance reviewers and even competent supervisors will flag a plan with twelve objectives as unfocused and essentially non-compliant. Pick the three that matter most right now. Step three is converting the planner's generic interventions into something specific to your client. The planner says "teach relaxation techniques." You write "child will practice guided imagery using a recorded script twice weekly during sessions, with parent reinforcement at home, measured by self-report checklist rated below 4 on a 5-point distress scale." That is what a real treatment goal looks like.
Step four is adding baseline data. The planner does not give you baseline measurements for your specific child. You need to pull those from your intake assessment, behavior logs, parent questionnaires, teacher reports, or standardized instruments like the CBCL, SCARED, or Conners rating scales depending on the diagnosis. Without baseline numbers, your treatment plan has nothing to measure progress against and your progress notes will be vague. Step five is scheduling review points. I set objective reviews at eight-week intervals for most children. If a child is in acute crisis or medication is being adjusted, I move that to four weeks. The planner does not tell you when to revisit goals. You do that.
Where this tool falls apart
It is not current with DSM-5-TR. The Second Edition came out in 2015 and DSM-5-TR was published in 2022. Some diagnostic criteria shifted. The planner still references DSM-5 language but it does not reflect the minor clarifications and specifiers that came in the TR update. If you are documenting for insurance or licensing boards in states that require DSM-5-TR alignment, you need to be careful about what you copy directly. It assumes a fairly neurotypical, verbal child population for many of its interventions. As I mentioned with the non-speaking autistic client, a significant portion of pediatric psychotherapy populations do not fit the default model. There are sections for autism and intellectual disability, but they are thin. The interventions listed there are still heavily cognitive-behavioral in flavor and not always adapted for developmental level. It encourages a one-size-fits-all documentation style. If you use the planner's progress note templates verbatim across multiple clients, you will sound like a robot. Supervisors notice this. Insurance auditors notice this too. You need to rewrite the language in your own clinical voice.
For children who are in foster care or the juvenile justice system, the planner does not address the structural and systemic interventions that are often necessary. A child with PTSD from neglect needs placement stability and case coordination, not just trauma-focused CBT homework sheets. The planner will not tell you that. You have to know it already.
What to pair it with instead of treating it as the whole system
I use the planner alongside the Child and Adolescent Treatment Planning Guide by John C. Norcross and the DSM-5-TR itself as reference standards. For assessment, I keep the CBCL/6-18, the SCARED for anxiety, and the Vanderbilt Assessments for ADHD cases on hand. Those give you the data the planner lacks. For intervention depth beyond what the planner offers, I rely on standard CBT for children manuals like the one by Judith Cohen, Anthony Mannarino, and Esther Deblinger for trauma, or the working with anxious children resources from the OCD, Anxiety, and Trauma Institute model. The planner is a directory. It is not a curriculum.
Where to get it
The Child Psychotherapy Treatment Planner Second Edition is published by John Wiley & Sons. It is available through Wiley's website, major online retailers, and through professional suppliers like Pearson Clinical. The ISBN for the paperback second edition is 978-1-118-77700-5. There is also a paperback bundle that combines the planner with a progress note planner, which some clinicians prefer if they want the documentation piece in the same volume. Digital versions exist through platforms like MindGarden and some EMR-integrated service providers, but the quality and update frequency of those vary. I stick with the printed book because I can mark it up and flip through it during a session without opening a laptop.
The practical reality after years of using this
The planner saves me probably twenty to thirty minutes per new case on treatment planning paperwork. That is the honest estimate. It does not make me a better therapist. It does not replace clinical judgment. It does not handle complex family systems or traumatic histories on its own. What it does is give me a structured starting point that is defensible to supervisors and insurers and that keeps me from forgetting to include a relevant intervention category. I use it, I adapt it aggressively, and I do not pretend it is anything more than a well-organized reference book with clinical intentions behind it.
