About CCD
If you’ve ever felt the tension between staying child-centered and meeting the demands of managed care, you’re not alone.
Many Child-Centered Play Therapists know that internal conflict. You want to trust the process, but feel pressure to fix things faster or prove progress in ways that don’t reflect the heart of the work.
The Child-Centered Documentation (CCD) framework is designed to bridge that gap. It offers a way to think about, organize, and communicate your clinical work so it honors the child’s growth while also speaking the language of behaviors that systems and caregivers often prioritize.
CCD's Approach
The CCD framework is simple, flexible, and grounded in the belief that internal growth leads to external change. It uses a two-lane approach to help you see and communicate progress:
Internal Growth – the child’s emotional development, sense of self, and relational capacities
Behavioral Symptoms – the observable changes often requested by caregivers or systems
When you track both lanes, you can create documentation that reflects the whole child—not just their behaviors. This approach allows you to stay true to your theoretical foundations, meet the requirements of many medical-model systems, and feel confident your paperwork tells the real story of change.
Learn More About the CCD Approach
Where to Start
CCD is a practical guide to case conceptualization, treatment planning, and progress notes, designed for practicing clinicians. You can start with the book, Play Therapy Documentation Essentials, the self-paced training (coming soon), or both. Each offers the same tools and templates to help you put CCD into practice.
About the Author
Rosie Newman, LMHC, RPT-S™
Rosie is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Registered Play Therapist-Supervisor™. Rosie is the founder of Seattle Play Therapy, where she provides supervision to clinicians and therapy services to children and families. Rosie is also an adjunct faculty at Seattle University in the psychology department.
Rosie's Story about Creating CCD
Dear fellow play therapist,
I developed the Child-Centered Documentation framework from my years of practicing Child-Centered Play Therapy in a variety of settings. Like many CCPT therapists, I often felt uncomfortable quantifying symptoms in treatment plans as managed care requires—because it didn’t align with my theoretical orientation or how I practice.
I could feel something magical happening in the playroom as children began to believe in themselves and move toward self-actualization. But I struggled to explain to caregivers how and why those changes were occurring, and how they connected to the treatment plan.
Something was missing: a way to integrate the theoretical frame of CCPT with the need to measure progress toward symptom reduction. The simple truth is this—internal growth leads to external change—and a meaningful treatment plan should reflect both.
Over the years, I’ve shared this way of thinking about CCPT treatment planning and assessing progress with supervisees and in international trainings. The result has been more confidence in conceptualizing progress and less stress around clinical documentation.
Now, I’m sharing it more widely through trainings, resources, and my book, Play Therapy Documentation Essentials. Perhaps it will help you, too.
Playfully yours,
Rosie
What People Are Saying
Here’s what therapists and readers have shared about using CCD and the Play Therapy Documentation Essentials book.
clear and comprehensive framework"