Measuring client clinical progress in therapeutic community treatment. The therapeutic community Client Assessment Inventory, Client Assessment Summary, and Staff Assessment Summary.

The therapeutic community (TC) Client Assessment Inventory (CAI), Client Assessment Summary (CAS), and Staff Assessment Summary (SAS) are instruments developed from a comprehensive theory of TC treatment and recovery. They measure client self-report and staff evaluation of client progress along 14 domains of behavior, attitude, and cognitive change. The present article reports on the development of the instruments and findings from an analysis of data on 346 clients in TC treatment; including scale properties and cross-sectional client differences by treatment tenure. The instruments were administered over a 1-year period at two residential TC facilities. Findings indicate that both client and staff instruments reliably differentiate client clinical changes during treatment and client self-ratings are initially consistently higher than staff ratings. Clarifying and measuring changes in the individual during treatment is the first step in the effort to understand the change process and what steps can be taken to improve treatment effectiveness.