Good Lives Model

1. Introduction

Version followed: the GLM as integrated with RNR, CBT and the Self-Regulation Model–Revised (SRM-R) for sexual offending, set out in Willis, Yates, Gannon & Ward (2013) and Yates, Prescott & Ward (2010). Session sequencing is updated from Ward, Willis, Prescott et al. (2025, draft Chapter 4). The adolescent G-MAP adaptation (GLM-A; Print, 2013) is noted where it differs.

The Good Lives Model (GLM) is a rehabilitation framework, not a stand-alone therapy or manual. Tony Ward developed it in New Zealand in the early 2000s, with Gannon, Mann, Yates, Willis and Prescott. It sits on top of RNR-consistent cognitive-behavioural treatment and reshapes its aims, assessment, content and delivery. The developers explicitly reject treating it as a manualised protocol or certifying programmes as "GLM" [source: Willis et al. 2013; Ward et al. 2025 draft ch. 4; CEBC profile].

Core idea of change:

Like everyone, people who offend seek a set of primary human goods, such as relatedness, inner peace, agency and knowledge.
Offending is a harmful or flawed means of getting those goods, or the product of a flawed life plan. The flaws are means, scope, conflict and capacity.
Criminogenic needs (dynamic risk factors) are the obstacles that block pro-social pursuit of those goods.
Change comes from helping the person build the internal capacities (skills, beliefs, emotion regulation) and external conditions (opportunities, supports, resources) needed to pursue their most valued goods in ways incompatible with offending. This is the Good Lives Plan (GLP), which replaces the relapse-prevention plan.
Risk reduction and well-being are pursued together, as twin aims [source: CEBC profile; Willis, Prescott & Yates 2013; Prescott 2014 UNAFEI].

The developers summarise the premise as "offenders want better lives not simply the promise of less harmful ones" (Ward, Mann & Gannon 2007, p. 106, quoted in Prescott, UNAFEI).

2. Framework

What the GLM is. It is a framework applied within individual or group treatment, which can be in prison, community probation, forensic mental health or youth services. The developers' clinical writing centres on sexual offending, but they also apply it to general and violent offending and to mentally disordered offenders [source: Willis et al. 2013; Ward et al. 2025 draft]. It must be built into the whole programme from the first contact. A GLM module added at the end is "too late" and loses its engagement value [source: Prescott, UNAFEI; Willis, Prescott & Yates 2013].

Primary goods. The original Ward list has eleven goods: life, knowledge, excellence in play, excellence in work, excellence in agency, inner peace, relatedness, community, spirituality, pleasure/happiness and creativity [source: CEBC]. Yates & Prescott (2011) relabelled them as "common life goals" for client use, merging work and play into one goal:

Life: Living and Surviving
Knowledge: Learning and Knowing
Being Good at Work and Play
Personal Choice and Independence
Peace of Mind
Relationships and Friendships
Community: Being Part of a Group
Spirituality: Having Meaning in Life
Happiness
Creativity

Labels can be adapted locally, but the definitions should stay the same. Australian clients, for example, preferred "being good at hobbies and leisure activities" [source: Willis, Prescott & Yates 2013]. G-MAP condensed the goods to eight adolescent "needs": fun, achievement, being my own person, relationships, purpose and making a difference, emotional health, sexual health and physical health [source: Murphy, CYCJ 2017].

Overall sequence (Willis et al. 2013 / Yates et al. 2010):

Stage	Goal	Main tasks
0. Orientation and consent	Engage around twin aims	Programme framing, consent and contracts in approach terms, collaborative group rules, strength-based introductions, brief GLM orientation
1. Assessment	Whole-person picture	Risk (static and dynamic), responsivity, goods weighting (past, present, at time of offence), secondary goods, GLP flaws, offence progression and self-regulation pathway
2. Formulation and intervention planning	Shared, client-owned plan	Integrated GLM/SRM-R formulation, feedback session, intervention plan (prioritised goods, obstacles, strengths, sub-goals including non-criminogenic ones)
3. Treatment	Build capacity for the new GLP	Autobiography, offence progression, pathway-specific methods, RNR modules reframed as approach goals tied to goods
4. Future-oriented GLP	Replace relapse prevention	Integrated good-life/self-regulation/risk-management plan with immediate, medium and long-term steps, plus release planning
5. Maintenance and supervision	Sustain and refine	Supervision monitors risk and supports goods attainment; the plan is reviewed and revised

[source: Willis et al. 2013; Yates, Prescott & Ward 2010 table of contents and introduction]

Phase version in Ward et al. (2025, draft ch. 4). Treatment "often" runs in three to four phases:

Address factors that interfere with treatment.
Explore the past GLP and build capacities for a new one.
Build horizontal and vertical coherence around the person's practical identity, then implement and refine the plan.
Aftercare: review the plan's ups and downs in daily life, ideally in the community.

Older assessment-to-plan sequence. A secondary Flemish review attributes a six-step sequence to Ward, Mann & Gannon (2007):

Detect criminogenic needs.
Identify the goods sought through offending.
Identify strengths and available secondary goods.
Specify how the goods translate into behaviour and lifestyle.
Examine the context the person will return to.
Draft the GLP.

[uncertain: primary 2007 paper not drawn on; the steps come via the Opgroeien literature study]

Session count and format.

No GLM-specific session count exists in any source.
Dosage follows the RNR risk principle: higher-risk clients get more intensive treatment, and over-treating low-risk clients can raise recidivism [source: Wilson & Yates 2009; Willis et al. 2013].
Formats include individual work, open groups using workbook exercises as discussion starters, and paraprofessional-led skill exercises in high-intensity settings under clinical specialist oversight [source: Ward et al. 2025 draft].
Client materials: Building a Better Life workbook (Yates & Prescott 2011); assessment protocol and semi-structured interview (Yates, Kingston & Ward 2009) [uncertain].

Criteria for moving between stages.

Assessment to treatment: the clinician's view of the client's heavily weighted goods, how they link to offending, and the client's strengths has been checked with the client in a feedback session [source: Willis et al. 2013].
Ward et al. (2025) give a practitioner checklist before implementation. Have the goods been defined as in the GLM, practical identity explored, strengths assessed, vertical and horizontal coherence and obstacles examined, and success indicators agreed?
Movement through treatment and into maintenance: [synthesis] Move on when the client can explain in their own words the goods behind their offending and their main obstacles. They should be using the new skills in the setting, and their GLP should have concrete steps they are already taking. Dynamic risk should be rescored rather than inferred. The source programmes are modular, so stage length is set by risk level and progress, not by a fixed calendar.

3. Guiding principles

[source for this section: CEBC; Willis et al. 2013; Willis, Prescott & Yates 2013; Yates, Prescott & Ward 2010 intro; Ward et al. 2025 draft; Prescott slides 2017]

Twin aims: risk reduction and well-being. State both in every contract, title and session aim. Never present treatment as only "stop offending".
Human dignity and rights. Clients are owed the same respect for well-being and freedom that they must show others. Address people as they wish to be addressed and avoid labels like "sex offender".
Agency. Clients are goal-directed agents. Plans are co-written, and their choices count.
Goods are legitimate; means are the problem. Say this explicitly when analysing an offence. The aim is to redirect how the client pursues what they want, not to shame the wanting.
All goods matter, weighted individually. Assess all of them, and let the client's own priorities set the plan. Don't drop goods such as spirituality or inner peace for convenience.
Criminogenic needs are obstacles to goods. Present each risk factor as something that blocks a goal the client cares about.
Approach goals over avoidance goals. Frame aims as what the client will build. Avoidant sub-clauses can sit under an approach goal, but don't forbid avoidance goals outright.
RNR still governs. Risk sets intensity, criminogenic needs remain the core targets, and responsivity shapes delivery. The GLM adds to RNR and does not replace it.
Strengths-based. Assess and build on goods the client already attains through healthy means.
Collaborative. Share reports, co-construct the plan and group rules, and ask for feedback. In the 2025 draft's words, "The GLM is inherently collaborative."
Therapist as guide, not teacher. The phrase is from Willis et al. (2013). Facilitate exercises rather than lecture.
Warm, non-confrontational style. Use WERD (warm, empathic, rewarding, directive) and the MI spirit (partnership, acceptance, compassion, empowerment). Avoid hostility, negative labelling and confrontation.
Not "normative police". Don't impose your own picture of a good life (Ward et al. 2025 draft). Hold the line on harm, not on lifestyle preferences.
Non-deficit language. Avoid "deficit", "deviance", "distortion" and "risk" where possible, and speak in terms of what the client can gain (Yates et al. 2010).
Context matters. Assess the environment the client returns to and build external capacity, not only internal skills. Ward's agent-action-context view means not focusing on the individual alone.
Practical identity and coherence. Organise the plan around roles the client values, such as worker or father, so that goods fit together.
Personalise, don't manualise. Use structured guides with integrity checks, but tailor them to each person. The 2025 draft asks: "Are we personalizing our manuals or are we trying to manualize persons?"
Whole-system consistency. Give all staff (custody, nursing, probation) GLM basics, and make the environment support goods pursuit.
Minimise coercion. Coercion predicts poorer outcomes. Aversive methods, plethysmography and imposed polygraphs sit outside GLM core values. Where they are required, explain them and reduce harm (Ward et al. 2025 draft).
Culture and development. Ask how culture shaped the client's GLP. With adolescents, adapt to developmental stage rather than scaling down adult methods.

4. Intervention inventory

The GLM has no proprietary techniques of its own. Its interventions are ways of orienting, assessing, formulating, planning and reframing standard RNR/CBT work. Everything below is drawn from the sources listed. Example language is my own illustrative wording unless it is quoted.

A. Engagement and orientation

4.1 Twin-aim framing of programme, consent and contracts

Purpose: Engage the client from the first contact by showing that treatment serves their own good life as well as public safety. Use this at intake, in consent forms, contracts and programme titles. [source: Willis et al. 2013]
Steps:
1. Audit titles and materials for one-aim language such as "Stop", "Relapse Prevention", "Safer Communities" or "Sex Offender Treatment Programme", and rename them in twin-aim terms.
2. In consent and contracts, state both aims, and link every requirement and prohibition to them with a reason.
3. Write each requirement as an approach goal. An avoidant sub-clause can sit underneath it. Willis et al. give the example of attending sober so as to benefit and contribute, with "not intoxicated" beneath it.
4. Even in mandated treatment, explain why each condition exists.
Example language (illustrative): "This programme has two jobs. One is to make sure nobody else gets hurt. The other is to help you build a life that's worth living, where you get the things that matter to you without hurting anyone. The rules we agree on are there to serve both."
Watch for: Mandated clients hear "well-being" as a trick. Back it with concrete early help, such as vocational or housing steps. It is working when the client starts naming goals of their own rather than only "not reoffending".

4.2 Collaborative group rules

Purpose: Build ownership and investment in group work. Use it in the first group session. [source: Willis et al. 2013]
Steps:
1. Ask members what conditions would help them get the most out of the group.
2. Shape their suggestions into approach-worded rules, such as "speak respectfully" rather than "no insults".
3. Add any non-negotiable institutional rules and explain the reasoning behind each.
4. Revisit the rules when the group's composition changes.
Example language (illustrative): "What would this group need to be like for you to say things that actually matter here?"
Watch for: Rules the therapist has pre-set and dressed up as collaborative.

4.3 Strength-based introductions and seating

Purpose: Signal equality and identity beyond the offence. Use it in initial sessions and when new members join an open group. [source: Willis et al. 2013]
Steps:
1. Seat people in a circle, with the therapist in the circle rather than behind a desk.
2. Each person shares a personal strength and something they want to work on. This replaces opening with offence and criminal history.
3. Display a GLM diagram in the room and return to it at check-ins.
Example language (illustrative): "Tell us something you're good at or proud of, and one thing you'd like to be different in your life by the time you leave here."
Watch for: Clients who can name no strength. Prompt them with domains such as work, sport, caring for someone or practical skills. Offence-focused introductions from peers who have been through older programmes should be redirected gently.

4.4 Brief GLM orientation (psychoeducation)

Purpose: Give clients the core model, that offending was a harmful way of pursuing things everyone wants, and the language of common life goals. Use it in early sessions. Don't confine the goods to a single psychoeducation module. [source: Willis et al. 2013; Ward et al. 2025 draft]
Steps:
1. Introduce the common-life-goal labels in plain, locally adapted wording.
2. Distinguish the goals themselves (primary goods) from the ways people go after them (secondary goods), using neutral examples such as sport serving belonging and mastery.
3. Explain that everyone's priorities differ.
4. Introduce the idea that the problem lies in the means, not in the wanting.
5. Preview that the programme will help the client build a plan around their own goals.
Example language (illustrative): "Everybody wants things like peace of mind, people close to them, a sense of being good at something. Nobody here is wrong for wanting those. What we'll look at is the ways you went about getting them, and which of those ways hurt people or backfired on you."
Watch for: Clients hearing this as an excuse ("so it wasn't my fault"). Balance it by saying that the means were their choice and caused real harm. Clinicians and clients also often find the abstract terms confusing [source: Willis, Prescott & Yates 2013], so check understanding by asking for a personal example.

B. Assessment

4.5 Risk and responsivity assessment, reframed

Purpose: Keep the RNR core, which sets intensity and identifies dynamic targets, while presenting the results as obstacles to goods. Use it at intake and at reassessment. [source: Willis et al. 2013]
Steps:
1. Score validated static and dynamic tools. Willis et al. name Static-99R and Stable-2007; use whatever your jurisdiction licenses, and don't reproduce items.
2. Assess responsivity factors: cognitive ability, learning style, personality, mental health, culture, medication and motivation.
3. When giving feedback, link each dynamic factor to the specific good it blocks.
Example language (illustrative): "One thing that came up is how quickly you act when you're wound up. As I understand it, that's also what keeps costing you the independence you've told me matters most."
Watch for: Risk results delivered as a verdict. When the framing is working, the client argues less with the score and engages with the obstacle.

4.6 Goods extraction interview

Purpose: Identify which goods are most heavily weighted for this person, now, in the past and at the time of offending. Use it early in assessment. This is the core GLM assessment. [source: Willis et al. 2013; Prescott, UNAFEI; Ward et al. 2025 draft]
Steps:
1. Don't hand over a list of goods to rank. Clients talk in activities, and the names of the goods are unfamiliar to them.
2. Elicit narratives about what the client does and cares about. Listen reflectively, paraphrase and summarise, and infer the goods behind what they say.
3. Cover all goods. For each, ask how important it is now and was before, whether the client wants more of it, and whether its importance has changed.
4. Use the time of the offence as a reference point. Ask about earlier life plans to find goods the client gave up for lack of skill or opportunity.
5. For each good, explore the past, present and future: ways pursued, strengths and resources used, what worked, the role of risk processes, adversity or trauma as roadblocks, whether the good was over- or under-emphasised, early warning signs and who would notice them, and how progress would be recognised [source: Ward et al. 2025 draft].
6. If available, use the semi-structured GLM interview (Yates, Kingston & Ward 2009) [uncertain: structure not verified].
Example language (illustrative): "Walk me through a week when life was going well. What were you doing, and who with?" / "Back then, what did you want your life to look like in five years?" / "Is there something you used to care about that you let go of? What happened?"
Watch for: Concluding from one activity that the client is "just antisocial". It is working when the clinician can name the two or three overarching goods and the client recognises them as theirs.

4.7 Meaning exploration of secondary goods

Purpose: Infer the primary goods behind an activity, because one activity can serve many goods. Use it whenever a client describes an activity, including offending or other antisocial means. [source: Prescott, UNAFEI; Willis, Prescott & Yates 2013]
Steps:
1. Take the activity the client describes, such as theft, gang membership or making art.
2. Ask what it gave them and what was good about it.
3. Keep laddering until you reach a goal valued for its own sake. Theft, for example, may serve survival, pleasure, independence or belonging.
4. Record the activity-to-good link for the formulation.
Example language (illustrative): "When you were with the crew, what did that give you that you didn't get anywhere else?" ... "And what did being respected like that mean to you?"
Watch for: Stopping at the secondary good, for example "he likes money". Check that the inferred good fits the client's own wording.

4.8 Assessing means and strengths

Purpose: Map how the client pursued each good, which strategies worked, and which caused harm. Identify strengths, meaning goods already attained through appropriate means. Use it in assessment. [source: Willis et al. 2013]
Steps: For each weighted good, list:
- what the client has done or does now to pursue it
- whether it worked
- the harm it caused to others or the problems it created for the client
- appropriate means already in use, such as steady work or good emotion regulation in some contexts
Example language (illustrative): "You've held that job for six years, so you know how to be good at something and stick with it. Let's write that down; it's going in the plan."
Watch for: Assessment collapsing into a list of deficits.

4.9 Identifying flaws in the Good Lives Plan

Purpose: Pinpoint how the client's implicit life plan went wrong. This becomes the backbone of the formulation. [source: Willis et al. 2013; Prescott slides 2017]
Steps: Check each of the four flaws:
- Means: harmful or inappropriate ways of getting a good, such as offending to obtain relatedness.
- Scope: a narrow plan that neglects goods ("all eggs in one basket"), such as work crowding out relationships and leisure.
- Conflict: goods or means that clash, such as dominating a partner for autonomy while wanting closeness with the same partner. Ward et al. (2025) frame the positive aim as horizontal coherence, meaning goods that fit together.
- Capacity: internal (lacking skills or knowledge such as problem-solving or affect regulation) or external (lacking opportunities, resources or pro-social supports).
Example language (illustrative): "It sounds like almost everything rested on that one relationship. When it went, there was nothing else holding you up." (scope)
Watch for: Labelling only the means flaw. Most clients have several flaws.

4.10 Collateral questionnaires

Purpose: Supplement the interview. Use them at intake if available. [source: Willis et al. 2013]
Steps: Willis et al. name the Personal Concerns Inventory (Sellen et al. 2006) and the Quality of Life Inventory (Frisch et al. 1992). Use them as conversation openers, not as rankings of goods. I haven't described their items, and the QOLI is a licensed instrument.
Watch for: Treating a score as identifying goods without the interview.

4.11 Offence progression analysis and self-regulation pathway assessment

Purpose: Understand what the offending was for, and how the client regulated, or failed to regulate, their goals. This replaces the offence "cycle". [source: Willis et al. 2013; Yates et al. 2010 TOC; Kingston 2010 thesis summarising Ward & Hudson 1998]
Steps:
1. Classify the route to offending:
  - Direct: the offence was an explicit attempt to get a good. Ask what the client was trying to achieve.
  - Indirect: pursuing one good set off a chain, such as a breakup leading to drinking for peace of mind, then disinhibition, then the offence. Clients with intellectual impairment may need extra support to see these links.
2. Map the offence through the SRM phases: life event, desire, offence-related goal (approach or avoidance), strategy selection, entering a high-risk situation, lapse, offence, post-offence evaluation and attitude to future offending.
3. Assign a provisional pathway:
  - avoidant-passive: wanted to avoid offending but under-regulated
  - avoidant-active: used strategies that backfired, such as alcohol to suppress urges
  - approach-automatic: impulsive and script-driven
  - approach-explicit: deliberate planning with intact self-regulation
4. State explicitly that the desire for the good was legitimate.
Example language (illustrative): "Before it happened, what were you hoping to get out of that evening? ... And afterwards, how did you feel about yourself?" (the post-offence evaluation helps distinguish avoidant from approach pathways)
Watch for: Pathways can change over time and across offences. Pathway assignment is a working hypothesis. Yates et al. (2010, ch. 5) give the full method [uncertain].

C. Formulation and planning

4.12 Integrated GLM/SRM-R case formulation

Purpose: Produce one account that links goods, flaws, strengths, pathway and risk. Use it at the end of assessment. [source: Willis et al. 2013; Yates et al. 2010 TOC chs 6–7; Wilson & Yates 2009]
Steps: Write the formulation so it covers:
1. the heavily weighted goods and how pursuing them related to offending, by a direct or indirect route
2. the specific flaws: means, scope, conflict and capacity
3. strengths, meaning appropriate means used now or in the past
4. the self-regulation pathway
5. dynamic risk factors, each stated as an obstacle to a named good
6. the external context the client will return to
Example language (illustrative, in a report written for the client): "Mr A places most weight on relationships and peace of mind. Lacking ways to manage loneliness and stress, he used sexual contact with a child as a means to both..."
Watch for: Formulations that read as a list of risk factors with goods added at the end.

4.13 Feedback session and shared reports

Purpose: Check the clinician's understanding with the client and build ownership. Use it before finalising the plan. [source: Willis et al. 2013]
Steps:
1. Share the draft formulation and assessment results in plain language.
2. Ask the client to correct and add to it, especially the goods they weight most and the strengths.
3. Present dynamic risk results as factors that block the goods they prioritise.
4. Record where the client disagrees, and revisit it later.
Example language (illustrative): "Here's what I've understood about what matters most to you. Tell me where I've got it wrong."
Watch for: The client endorsing everything passively. Ask them to rank or reword items.

4.14 Intervention plan construction

Purpose: Turn the formulation into a client-owned plan. Willis et al. prefer "intervention plan" to "treatment plan". Use it after the feedback session and update it throughout. [source: Willis et al. 2013]
Steps: For each prioritised good, record:
1. the dynamic risk factors that frustrate it
2. existing strengths
3. future-oriented secondary goals
4. sub-goals, including criminogenic targets and non-criminogenic steps the programme itself may not deliver, such as vocational training
5. who else can help, such as other services and support people
Worked example (Willis et al.): A client who prioritises excellence in work wants to be a mechanic. His sub-goals are reducing impulsivity (criminogenic) and vocational training (non-criminogenic).
Example language (illustrative): "So the big goal is 'working as a mechanic'. What gets in the way? You've said your temper on the job. That goes in as a step under this goal."
Watch for: Plans that list only programme modules. It is working when the client can explain why each module is in their plan.

4.15 Practical identity and coherence work

Purpose: Organise the plan around roles the client values, such as worker, father, artist or community member. Make the goods hang together vertically, ranked under an overarching good or identity, and horizontally, without conflicting. Use it during formulation and treatment (Ward et al. 2025, phase 3). [source: Ward et al. 2025 draft; CEBC; definitions of vertical and horizontal coherence are from the wider GLM literature: uncertain]
Steps:
1. Ask which roles the client values or wants to grow into. Their offending can also show which practical identity they prioritised, such as the "working man" in the 2025 vignette.
2. Map which goods each role delivers.
3. Look for clashes and imbalance between goods.
4. Choose secondary goods that serve several goods at once without conflicting.
Example language (illustrative): "If you picture yourself as the kind of dad you want to be, what does he do on a Saturday? Which of the things that matter to you does that cover?"
Watch for: A single identity that recreates a scope flaw.

D. Treatment content

4.16 Autobiography (personal history / past GLP)

Purpose: Explore how the client's goods, means and capacities developed, including adversity and trauma as roadblocks. Use it early in treatment (Yates et al. 2010, ch. 9; Ward et al. 2025, phase 2). [source: Yates et al. 2010 TOC; Willis, Prescott & Yates 2013 Table 2]
Steps:
1. The client tells or writes their life story in periods.
2. For each period, note what they valued, how they pursued it, what blocked them, and what strengths they showed.
3. Link this to the formulation.
4. In a group, members respond to each other's stories with strengths as well as concerns.
Example language (illustrative): "As we go through each part of your life, let's mark what you were going after and what helped or got in the way."
Watch for: Re-traumatisation and over-long disclosure. Pace the work using trauma-informed principles (4.24).

4.17 Offence progression (disclosure)

Purpose: Give a detailed account of the offence progression in GLM/SRM terms, as an alternative to the offence "cycle". The aim is knowledge of how GLP problems led to offending, not extraction of a confession. Use it in early-to-middle treatment. [source: Willis et al. 2013; Yates et al. 2010 TOC ch. 10; Willis, Prescott & Yates 2013]
Steps:
1. The client describes the progression through the SRM phases (see 4.11).
2. The therapist and group help identify the goods sought, the flaws, and the thoughts, feelings and behaviours at each step.
3. Conclude with what the client now needs in order to get those goods differently.
Example language (illustrative): "Let's slow down at the point where you decided to go over there. What were you wanting right then?"
Watch for: Willis et al. warn against making full acceptance of responsibility and restructuring distortions the primary aim early on, because that is a societal aim, not the client's. Willis, Prescott & Yates warn that over-focusing on full disclosure can crowd out strengths and future goals.

4.18 Reframing each RNR module as an approach goal tied to goods

Purpose: Keep the empirically supported targets but "wrap" them around the client's goods (Willis et al. 2013). Use it for every module. [source: Willis et al. 2013; Willis, Prescott & Yates 2013 Table 2]
Steps: Give each module an approach aim linked to goods, then personalise it to each member's plan. The source mapping is:
- Understanding offending / offence progression links to knowledge. Aim: understand how GLP problems led to offending.
- Cognition and problem-solving link to knowledge, personal choice, peace of mind and relationships.
- Relationships and intimacy link to relatedness, community and agency. Aim: build satisfying adult relationships, starting from existing strengths, not only avoiding problem relationships.
- Emotion regulation links to peace of mind and personal choice. Aim: manage emotions in ways that secure inner peace.
- General self-regulation links to peace of mind and personal choice.
- Sexual self-regulation links to happiness, peace of mind and relationships. Core constructs: impulsivity, sex as coping, and healthy versus unhealthy relationships.
- Relapse prevention is replaced by the integrated GLP (4.22).
Example language (illustrative): "This next block is about handling anger. For you, Dean, that ties straight to the peace of mind you said you never get, and to keeping your kids in your life."
Watch for: Clients in a group may share a criminogenic need but serve different goods with it, so tailor the rationale to each member.

4.19 Arousal reconditioning within GLM framing

Purpose: Keep standard CBT reconditioning, because deviant arousal predicts reoffending. Add an analysis of what the arousal serves and approach goals for appropriate sexuality. Use it where problematic arousal is assessed. [source: Willis et al. 2013]
Steps:
1. Deliver the reconditioning method your service uses; the GLM does not specify one.
2. Explore the function of the arousal or fantasy: intimacy, emotion regulation or physical satisfaction.
3. Set approach goals for appropriate fantasy, arousal and behaviour.
4. Teach healthy routes to the underlying good, such as adult intimacy skills or other ways of soothing.
5. In the GLP, record any recurrence of the arousal as a signal that a good, such as relatedness, peace of mind or life, is not being met. Willis et al. treat it as a signal to act on, not just a warning sign to cope with.
Example language (illustrative): "When those fantasies come back, it's worth asking what's missing at the moment: company, calm, something else. That tells us what part of the plan needs work."
Watch for: Aversive methods. Ward et al. (2025) place these outside GLM core values.

4.20 Self-regulation pathway-tailored methods

Purpose: Match methods to the client's offence pathway. Use them during the middle treatment phase. [source: Yates et al. 2010 TOC ch. 11; the content below is uncertain]
Steps (uncertain; my reading of the pathway logic, not verified against Yates et al. 2010 ch. 11):
- Avoidant-passive: build active coping and self-efficacy, so that the wish to avoid offending is backed by skills.
- Avoidant-active: identify strategies that backfired, such as using alcohol or pornography to suppress urges, and replace them with effective ones.
- Approach-automatic: make automatic scripts conscious and slow impulsive sequences down. Work on the offence-supportive beliefs that drive the scripts.
- Approach-explicit: self-regulation is intact, so focus on the offence-supportive goals and attitudes themselves, and invest heavily in alternative GLP routes to the goods the offending served.
Example language (illustrative, avoidant-active): "You were really trying not to do it, and the drinking felt like a way to shut the urges off. It sounds like it did the opposite. Let's find something that actually works."
Watch for: Pathway labels used as fixed categories.

4.21 Converting avoidance goals to approach goals

Purpose: Translate "don'ts" into goals the client can build towards, which are more achievable and more robust under stress. Use it in planning and every module. [source: Willis et al. 2013; Wilson & Yates 2009; Ward et al. 2025 draft]
Steps:
1. When the client states a goal as an avoidance ("stay away from kids", "not get angry"), ask what they would want in its place.
2. Make the approach goal the headline and keep any necessary avoidance as a sub-clause.
3. If the client only wants to avoid offending, explore their other aspirations and what they would gain. Don't prohibit the avoidance goal.
Worked example (Willis, Prescott & Yates): Where there is emotional congruence with children, build interpersonal competence with adults rather than only avoiding children.
Example language (illustrative): "'Not being around kids' tells us what you won't do. What will you be doing on those evenings instead, and with whom?"
Watch for: An approach goal that quietly reopens access to risk. Approach goals never override supervision conditions.

4.22 Future-oriented integrated Good Lives Plan (replaces the relapse-prevention plan)

Purpose: Produce a detailed plan for pursuing heavily weighted goods in ways incompatible with offending, with risk management built in. Use it in the final treatment phase, then carry it into the community. [source: Willis et al. 2013; Willis, Prescott & Yates 2013 Table 3; Prescott, UNAFEI; Yates et al. 2010 TOC ch. 12]
Steps:
1. Take each prioritised common life goal in turn.
2. Following the published template columns, write for it:
  - the ways the client will obtain it
  - how they will know they are getting it
  - problems they will need to manage
  - risk factors
  - risk-management strategies
3. Split the steps into immediate, medium-term and long-term.
4. Include as warning signs both the classic risk signs and signs that the plan itself is failing, such as no longer pursuing valued goals.
5. Include approach-oriented strategies for any acute arousal or crisis.
6. Name who supports each part of the plan.
Example language (illustrative): "Under 'Relationships', how will you know it's going right? What would tell you, or your probation officer, that it's slipping?"
Watch for: Plans that are only lists of high-risk situations, or are vague ("get a job"). It is working when every risk strategy is clearly linked to a goal the client wants.

4.23 Reintegration planning and building external capacity

Purpose: Secure the external conditions for the GLP: housing, employment, social support and pro-social networks. Willis et al. note that housing, employment and social support are linked to reduced sexual recidivism. Use it from mid-treatment through release. [source: Willis et al. 2013; Ward et al. 2025 draft; Murphy 2017; CEBC citing Willis & Ward 2011]
Steps:
1. Map the context the client will return to.
2. Build an intervention team around the client's goods. Willis et al. give the example of a client who values knowledge, whose team includes university teachers, indigenous experts, his therapist and support people.
3. Link the client to services for the non-criminogenic steps.
4. Coordinate with supervision, so that it monitors risk and also supports goods attainment. Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA) are cited as one community model consistent with this.
Example language (illustrative): "Who on the outside could help you with the 'learning' part of your plan? Let's get their names and how we'd reach them."
Watch for: Ward & Maruna (via Braet) warn of losing focus by defining the network too broadly. Prioritise contacts that serve the top-weighted goods.

4.24 Trauma-informed adjustment

Purpose: Respond to adversity that blocks goods. Use it whenever trauma history affects engagement. [source: Ward et al. 2025 draft]
Steps:
1. Distinguish trauma-specific protocols, which may need referral, from trauma-informed care in GLM work.
2. Assess the effects of trauma on attachments and relationships, on cognitions and core beliefs (such as rigidity or an external locus of control), and on self-regulation.
3. Record trauma as a roadblock to specific goods in the plan.
4. Expect slow change.
Example language (illustrative): "It makes sense that trusting people feels dangerous after what happened. Let's build the relationships goal at a pace that's manageable."
Watch for: Trauma work displacing criminogenic targets. Keep both in the plan.

4.25 Group check-ins on plan progress

Purpose: Keep the GLP alive week to week and reinforce pro-social attempts to pursue goods. Use them at the start of each group. [source: Willis et al. 2013]
Steps:
1. Each member reports one step taken toward a goal, including non-criminogenic ones, and any obstacles.
2. Peers and the therapist reinforce effort.
3. Link the report back to the GLM diagram on the wall.
Example language (illustrative): "What did you do this week for the goals on your plan, even something small?"
Watch for: Check-ins turning into incident reports only.

4.26 Post-treatment maintenance and supervision

Purpose: Sustain gains and revise the plan in real life. This is phase 4 in Ward et al. (2025) and ch. 13 in Yates et al. (2010). [source: Yates et al. 2010 TOC/intro; Ward et al. 2025 draft; Willis et al. 2013]
Steps:
1. Hold regular reviews of the GLP: what is working, what is not, and new obstacles.
2. Rescore dynamic risk.
3. Revise means and goals as circumstances change.
4. Celebrate progress, as the 2025 draft recommends agreeing in advance how progress will be acknowledged.
5. Plan how the client will keep the plan coherent after supervision ends.
Example language (illustrative): "Three months out: which parts of the plan are carrying you, and which ones haven't got off the ground?"
Watch for: Supervision drifting back to compliance-only monitoring.

4.27 Adolescent adaptation (G-MAP GLM-A)

Purpose: Apply the GLM with young people who sexually harm. Use it in youth services. [source: Murphy, CYCJ 2017; Print 2013; Ward et al. 2025 draft]
Steps:
1. Use the eight "my needs" (see Section 2) and "how I meet my needs" in place of primary and secondary goods.
2. Explore the young person's view of a good life, their core commitments and valued activities, and the needs their harmful behaviour met.
3. Build a good lives plan with them.
4. Target internal skills, external supports and the risk factors that block the plan.
5. Formulate systemically, involving family and carers, and create legitimate opportunities for the young person to build social capital.
6. Tailor the work to developmental stage rather than shrinking adult methods.
Example language (illustrative): "What would a really good week look like for you? What do you need to feel like you're your own person?"
Watch for: Priorities and capacities shift quickly in adolescence, so revisit the plan often. Murphy (2017) reports that young people found the model hopeful and motivating.

4.28 Fidelity monitoring and staff-wide implementation

Purpose: Prevent "GLM in name only". Use it in supervision and service design. [source: Ward et al. 2025 draft; Prescott slides 2017; Willis et al. 2013]
Steps:
1. Train all staff who touch the client in GLM basics.
2. Review cases against the GLM Fidelity Monitoring Tool, which covers fundamental processes, GLM-specific processes and ten client-focused questions [tool not seen; described only].
3. Remove cycle-based and avoidance-only tasks as well as adding GLM ones.
4. Support practitioners bottom-up, for example with regular MI or GLM practice tips and internal trainers.
Watch for: The claim that "we already do this".

5. Handling problems

The sources discuss mostly implementation errors. Responses to individual clinical difficulties are largely my own synthesis and are marked as such.

Programme-level errors the developers name [source: Willis et al. 2013; Willis, Prescott & Yates 2013; Prescott, UNAFEI; Ward et al. 2025 draft; Prescott slides 2017]

GLM bolted on at the end, or adopted as labels only. Rebuild aims, titles, contracts, assessment and module aims from the start. The developers warn that misapplied GLM "could unintentionally increase the very risk" it is meant to manage (Willis, Prescott & Yates).
Avoidance goals swapped for approach goals without assessing goods. Assess first (4.6–4.9) and only then rewrite goals.
Handing clients a list of goods to rank. Use extraction instead (4.6).
Plans imposed by staff (paternalism). Co-construct the plan, and check agreement on goals, tasks, bond and cultural values (Bordin's alliance, per Ward et al. 2025).
The GLM treated as a list of what is missing in the client's life. Lead with strengths (4.8).
Confrontation, labelling, or the therapist acting as teacher. Use a circle, a guide role, and warm, empathic, rewarding and directive behaviour.

Client-level difficulties

Client cannot name anything they want, or says "I just want to get out".
- Treat "getting out" as a secondary good and ladder it: what would freedom let them do? [synthesis]
- Use the time of the offence and earlier life plans as reference points, as Willis et al. recommend. Ask about goods the client gave up.
- Prescott's client who knew only what he did not want to be is a reminder that the vision itself may have to be built [source: Prescott slides].
- For clients with low verbal ability, use visual aids and artwork [source: Ward et al. 2025 draft].
Denial or minimisation of the offence.
- Willis et al. advise against making full acceptance of responsibility the early aim. Start from goods and the future, and come back to the offence progression once engagement is established [source: Willis et al. 2013; Willis, Prescott & Yates 2013].
- [synthesis] Work on the goods and obstacles the client does acknowledge, such as loneliness, drinking or temper. Many dynamic targets can be addressed without a full admission. Keep risk assessment and supervision independent of the client's account. Whether a client in categorical denial can go on to offence-specific work is a matter for your programme's policy [uncertain: not addressed in the sources].
Hearing the model as an excuse ("I had needs, so it's understandable").
- Repeat the distinction: the goods were legitimate, and the means were chosen and harmful [source: Willis et al. 2013].
- [synthesis] Ask the client to name the impact of those means on others and on their own goods. This places victim impact within the client's own goals, such as relatedness or self-respect.
Resistance and mandated anger.
- Explain the reason for every condition in terms of the twin aims. Use MI spirit and avoid confrontation. Acknowledge coercion openly, and minimise it where you can [source: Willis et al. 2013; Ward et al. 2025 draft].
- [synthesis] Roll with resistance by asking what the client would want from the time if it has to be served anyway.
Goals that conflict with risk management (for example, a client who wants to return to a family with children in it, or a job with access to victims).
- [synthesis] Respect the underlying good, such as relatedness or work. Explore alternative secondary goods that serve it safely. Be transparent about non-negotiable conditions, and record in the GLP the risk factor as an obstacle and the conditions as strategies.
- The developers state that approach goals sit alongside risk management and never replace it [source: Murphy 2017; Willis et al. 2013].
Client pursues goods through new harmful or risky means during treatment (for example, a secretive relationship or substance use for peace of mind).
- [synthesis] Treat it as information about an unmet good and a plan flaw, not only as a breach. Act on any risk at once under your service's protocols, then revise the plan.
- Willis et al. treat signs of goods not being met, including deviant arousal, as GLP warning signs [source: Willis et al. 2013].
Overwhelm, trauma activation or distress during the autobiography or offence progression.
- Slow the pace and expect slow change. Separate trauma-specific treatment, which may need referral, from trauma-informed delivery [source: Ward et al. 2025 draft].
- [synthesis] Break disclosure into segments, use grounding and emotion-regulation skills from the programme, and debrief before the session ends.
- If shame or hopelessness raise concern about self-harm or suicide, follow your service's standard risk-assessment procedure. Safety planning there includes lethal-means counselling, meaning restricted access and safe storage, and enlisting supports. The GLP's "peace of mind" and "life" goals give a natural way into that conversation.
Non-adherence to the plan outside sessions (homework not done, community steps not taken).
- [synthesis] Check whether the step served a good the client actually weights, or one the clinician picked. Check for external capacity barriers, such as no transport, money or opportunity, before attributing it to motivation. Shrink the step and agree how success will be recognised.
- The 2025 draft recommends agreeing success indicators and celebrating progress [source: Ward et al. 2025 draft].
Alliance ruptures (the client feels judged, or that the "good life" talk is hollow because of conditions or institutional limits).
- Ask for feedback routinely, since therapists overestimate their effectiveness [source: Ward et al. 2025 draft].
- [synthesis] Name the rupture, acknowledge real constraints honestly, and bring the client back to the parts of the plan they can control now. Don't oversell what the system can deliver.
Scope flaw that persists (the plan still hangs on one relationship or one job).
- [synthesis] Deliberately add secondary goods for at least two more goods. Rehearse what the client will do if the main source is lost. This works on horizontal and vertical coherence (4.15).
Group heterogeneity (members with different goods and pathways).
- Tailor each module's rationale to each member's plan [source: Willis et al. 2013].
- [synthesis] Use brief individual sessions for the pathway-specific work in 4.20.
Intellectual disability, cognitive impairment or limited literacy.
- Give extra support in linking goods to offending [source: Willis et al. 2013].
- [synthesis] Use concrete labels, pictures, short steps and supporters who reinforce the plan.
Cultural mismatch (individualistic goods such as "personal choice" fit poorly).
- Ask how culture shaped the client's plan, adapt the labels, and include cultural experts in the intervention team [source: Ward et al. 2025 draft; Willis et al. 2013; Willis, Prescott & Yates 2013].
Staff and supervisors who see the GLM as "soft".
- Present the twin aims and the RNR core, and train the whole team [source: Willis et al. 2013; Prescott slides].
- [synthesis] Show how each GLP item ties to a dynamic risk factor.

Sources

Sources: