The Goal-Based Outcome (GBO) Tool
Working with goals is a collaborative process, best done within a shared decision-making framework. If we listen well to our clients, their goals emerge from the stories they tell us about their lives, their difficulties, and things they would like to be different. Listening to these stories is part of what we all do in good, everyday therapeutic or clinical conversations. Using the GBO is a small step beyond usual clinical practice where, once the goals have emerged from conversation, we might help the client shape them, agree them together, and write them down to check we have both understood them. Once agreed we can be curious about where the client feels they are at in their journey towards making the changes in their lives that are important to them.
The Goal-Based Outcomes (GBO) tool is a simple and effective method to track and measure progress and outcomes of an intervention. It is one of the most widely used tools across mental health settings. The GBO grew out of mental health and can be used in any setting that is change-focused and goal-oriented, including physical health, high performance environments and sport.
The tool tracks what is arguably the most important thing to measure in any intervention: “Is this helping you make progress towards the things that you really want help with?”
The GBO is currently available in 9 different languages. If you want to help translate the GBO tool into another language please get in touch.
All available versions and translations
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The GBO Tool is free to use under a Creative Commons license.
Fidelity Tools: The GBO Video Observation Feedback Form
The GBO Video Observation Feedback Form is a resource to help supervisors or researchers give feedback to practitioners on their effective use of goals and the GBO Tool. The form is designed to be used to give feedback on videos of the practitioners using the GBO Tool with youth & families.
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The Video Observation Feedback Form is free to use under a Creative Commons license.
Goal-Based Outcomes - Helpful Ideas Tracker (GBO-HIT)
Sometimes we need helpful ideas and information to make changes in the future. For some people, what they want and need is to get the ideas and information which they can put into practice themselves, what we might call self-help. For others, they may want guided self-help with a practitioner who can coach and encourage change. For others still, they may want to fully engage in therapy as a process of change.
The GBO-HIT is a simple way to track if clients feel they are getting the ideas they need to help them with the things they want to change. It can be used to track if clients feel they are getting helpful ideas and facilitate discussions about this.
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The GBO-HIT is free to use under a Creative Commons license.