How To Build & Send Counseling Forms: 7 Best Templates

If you’re a counselor, you know that you deal with forms for a major portion of your time. There is a laundry list of things to inform, approve, and formally agree on when it comes to private practice intake forms for counseling clients.

The good news is that convenient new tools make sending, signing, and filing counseling forms quicker and easier for you and your client. This guide will show you how to simplify the process. Why not create your own counseling form template as you read with Quenza’s $1 trial?

How To Effectively Use Counseling Forms

First, let’s talk about how to work effectively with forms in your counseling practice.

You’ll want to make sure you’re using good therapy forms. What makes a form “good” though?

The specifics of each form will vary based on what you need to collect and how you need to collect it, but in general, your forms should be short, clear, and visually appealing.

Your counseling forms should be:

• Short and to the point (don’t collect any unnecessary information)
• Clear and easy to understand (be very direct and obvious about what information you need and in what format you need it)
• Clean and visually appealing (consistent font and size, not too busy).

The specifics of each form will vary based on what you need to collect and how you need to collect it. In general, though, your forms should be short, clear, and visually appealing:

In terms of actually using counseling forms, make sure you do the following when sharing forms with your clients:

• Tell them what the form is for, what information it is collecting, and why you need it.
• Give them ample time to read through the whole form before they fill and/or sign it.
• Identify which areas they need to fill out and where they need to sign and date (if necessary).

Basically, the more transparent and straightforward you are with your clients about what you need from them, the easier it is for them to comply.

This applies whether you’re dealing with components of your treatment plans, recommendations, or simply filling out forms.

Best Counseling Forms: 7 Templates & Samples

The therapy forms you need will depend on the type of counseling you do and the unique needs of your practice. However, there are some great counseling intake form templates and example forms. For each one, you can either adopt it as it is or customize it for your own use.

If you don’t see one that you need in the descriptions below, give it a quick web search. You’ll soon find at least one or two samples that you can adapt for your professional use.

Informed Consent Forms: 2 Templates

Therapy Informed Consent forms are one of the most important forms in any counseling practice.

They provide a written and signed acknowledgment that you have given your client relevant information about their treatment. It also shows them that you are on the same page about the goals of your partnership and what you can expect from one another.

If you’re looking for an informed consent counseling form that you can use or adapt for use in your practice, look no further than these two therapist templates.

1. This comprehensive form for online counseling from Clinical Care Consultants outlines what is allowed and expected in online counseling. It further defines how risk is managed as well as how technology will be used to facilitate counseling. Moreover, it clearly lays out the procedures for no-shows, cancellations, and payment processing.[1]
2. This form from Genesis Counseling Center is specifically designed for online therapy services, and it outlines exactly what the client can expect with online counseling. It also references how you will accept, which you can modify to fit your practice’s procedures.[2]

The best part is that once you know what you want to share with clients, you can digitalize a version of any freely-available tool, as shown below:

2 Helpful Assessment Forms

For those who need to assess different aspects of their client’s goals, challenges, personality, or any other relevant trait or characteristic, mental health assessment forms can be a great way to do that.

They essentially streamline and standardize a process that would otherwise require a lot of discussion, note-taking, and reviewing after the session.

Here are two helpful counseling form examples of assessment forms you might be able to use or adapt in your counseling practice:

1. Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9): this form provides you with a way to assess your client’s experience of depressive symptoms. It is a self-rating scale that directs clients to rate their symptoms on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 3 (nearly every day) and provides a rubric for the provider to assess the severity of their depression.
2. General Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7): this counseling form allows you to assess your client’s experience with anxiety symptoms. It is also a self-rating scale, with options ranging from 0 (not at all) to 3 (nearly every day). This then provides an overall score of anxiety for you, their provider, to determine the severity of their anxiety.

Referral Counseling Forms: A Sample

If you’re a school counselor looking for a form that teachers and staff can use to refer students to you, you’ll find this School Referral Form helpful.

It includes space to include all relevant personal information as well as its priority status (low, high, or emergency).

Alongside this, you can include the reason for the referral (including a long list of potential reasons/concerns) and what has happened so far. You might then want to add what actions have been taken to remedy the issue(s), if any.

2 Forms for Counseling Employees

When counseling employees, the form needs are slightly different. Most personal information is already collected, and you likely won’t need to worry about billing or collecting payment.

Instead, these forms focus on the reason for counseling. They allow you to note specific incidents in the workplace, as well as the employee’s and employer’s needs.

1. This form provides a good template for working with an employee who has been referred to counseling for an incident or issue of some kind. It provides space to describe the reason for counseling, any corrective action that will take place or has taken place, and any comments from the employee.
2. This counseling form is a more comprehensive counseling form, with extra space to describe the incident or issue, the current counseling session, and the recommended or required change to the therapy schedule. It also provides options for corrective or disciplinary action to be taken and specifies when a check-in will be scheduled to monitor progress towards the employee’s goals.

It’s generally not a happy time when employees need counseling, but having the right forms can make it easier and less painful for them.

Using Forms in Telehealth: A Guide

Finding a good template solves only one part of the challenge with counseling forms. You still need a way to send them to your clients, review and discuss them, and receive and securely store them.

Using email to send, discuss, and receive a therapy form is an option, but it’s not a good one. Email can be compromised, and it’s a messy way to keep track of things like a therapist form or any other agreement.

Emails can also easily be quarantined in a spam or junk folder. Moreover, they sometimes go to the wrong email address due to a single typo. Even worse, people often ignore or forget emails in the busyness of life and you lose a potential client.

Why not take those worries away by using professional software? It’s far more effective and convenient to use software that can handle all this for you. With Quenza, you won’t have to worry about lost counseling forms or insecure access.

Most importantly, Quenza allows you to get creative with how you tailor your forms. For instance, younger clients might prefer more interactive forms that ask them some fun questions about how they see themselves. On the other hand, older clients might prefer a more formal and to-the-point process.

Simply remember that every form you send is a client touchpoint. These represent opportunities to engage with your clients and to show them why you’re different but suited to their needs. For example, Quenza’s Pathway tool allows you to add questions, mini-quizzes, visuals and more to every form or exercise.

Quenza’s client app is a secure, HIPAA-compliant way to send counseling forms conveniently, and automatically remind clients to complete their forms.

How To Build & Send Online Forms

Quenza is one such tool that is capable of handling all your practice’s needs when it comes to creating, sending, and using your own particular therapist form.

First, you can use the Activity Builder to design your own custom counseling forms for any reason or requirement. Drag and drop text, multiple-choice questions, text entry boxes, and more to create the perfect form, as shown below:

Do you need to collect a name? No problem, just add in a short answer item!

Are you looking to note the date? Easy, you can add a date field!

Do you need your client to agree to something? Use a multiple-choice “yes/no” item to collect their agreement!

With Quenza, your forms are entirely customizable, to your specific needs. And once you have a good template set up, you can save it for quick future use. You can also create multiple versions of it if you need a slightly different therapy form for various clients or situations.

It’s also easy to send out the perfect counseling forms with Quenza. With the click of a button, you can have a form sent directly to your client’s inbox. You can even set up reminders to nudge your clients. After all, you want to get stuck into working with your clients sooner rather than later.

When they do complete the form, you’ll get a notification so you can review it for completeness right away.

7 Extra Features Included in Quenza

With Quenza’s Activity Builder, you’ll be able to create your own custom forms, exercises, resources, and more, in no time at all. It doesn’t stop there though because there are tons of ways to streamline your workflow with the app.

Here are just a few ways to use it:

• Design care pathways using Quenza’s Pathway tools to set up a customized intake process, onboarding, and treatment plan based on your clients’ needs.
• Customize and send from a library of premade, science-based Activities and Pathways designed to help clients with a wide variety of goals and challenges.
• Give your clients a free therapy app for completing homework and creating a portfolio of completed activities.
• Boosts engagement with notifications, reminders, and personal to-do list.
• Build your own Activities and interventions with drag-and-drop tools such as Quenza’s Wheel of Life feature.
• Track your clients results in one Dashboard so you can stay on top of their progress.
• Keep your therapy notes organized and secure in dedicated Client Notes section.
• Communicate directly and securely with HIPAA-compliant instant messaging.
• Brand and customize your client’s entire therapy experience, using White Label to make your content look uniquely “you.”

Final Thoughts

If you’re a counselor working with clients, especially in a digital format, you should consider using a tool like Quenza to help you manage your counseling forms. Overall, Quenza is one of the easiest tools to create, customize, store, and share your own counseling intake form templates.

Try it now yourself with your 30-day Quenza trial!

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