What should a family therapy intake form include?

A family therapy intake form needs a family roster, a separate space for each member to describe the concern in their own words, family structure and history, a safety screen, and consent and confidentiality sections that account for more than one adult and any minors. Unlike an individual intake, it gathers several accounts of one problem and treats the gap between them as clinical information rather than noise. The deeper work happens in the room; the form gives you the structural orientation to walk in prepared.

Who is the client in family therapy?

In family work the client is the family system, not the person the family names as the problem. Most families arrive pointing at one member, often a child or teenager, as the identified patient. A good family therapy intake form gently widens that frame by asking every member how they see the concern and what they would want to change, so the first session can open on the relationships rather than on a single person who already feels blamed.

How do you handle consent and confidentiality in family therapy?

Each adult participant gives informed consent, and you document custody or guardianship for any minor so you know who can authorise treatment. Confidentiality is more complex than in individual work because several people share the same record and the same room. Decide and state your policy in advance: many family therapists use a limited-confidentiality or no-secrets stance, meaning information shared individually may be brought into the family's work. Put that policy on the intake form so no one is surprised later.

How is a family therapy intake different from an individual intake?

An individual intake gathers one person's account. A family therapy intake form gathers several, maps how the household is structured and who relates to whom, and has to manage consent and confidentiality across multiple people at once. It leans on family history, roles, and patterns rather than a single symptom list, and its tone has to stay even-handed so that no member, especially the one the family calls the problem, reads it as taking sides.

intakefamily-therapytemplatesconsent

Family Therapy Intake Form: Template & Family-Systems Guide

Dr. Elena Vasquez · Child, Adolescent & Family Therapy Editor · May 27, 2026 · 6 min read

Outline

A family rarely books therapy because the family is unwell. They book because one person is, or so the story goes when they call. A child will not go to school, a couple cannot stop fighting in front of the kids, a teenager has gone quiet. By the time a household arranges a first appointment, it has usually settled on a single explanation and, often, a single person to carry it. The paperwork that arrives before the first session is the first chance to widen that frame, which is why a family therapy intake form is doing clinical work long before anyone sits down.

Most intake forms are built for one adult who speaks for themselves. A family does not work that way. The people in the room hold different, sometimes incompatible accounts of the same problem, they are bound by history and roles that predate the symptom, and the person they name as the reason for coming is frequently the one with the least say in the booking. A form that collects a single story misses the system that the work is actually about.

What a family therapy intake form has to hold

A useful family therapy intake form does the same four jobs as any intake, but each one bends around the fact that the client is a system rather than a person.

Clinical: It gathers each member’s account of the presenting concern and treats the distance between those accounts as data. It maps the family structure, who lives in the household, who else is involved, and the history that sits underneath the current strain.
Legal and ethical: It records who can consent to treatment for any minor, documents custody or guardianship, and states the limits of confidentiality clearly, because several people will share one record.
Administrative: It lists every member and their relationship to one another, captures custody arrangements, the referring clinician, and the payer, including how family sessions will be billed.
Relational: Its tone signals to the member the family calls the problem that they will not simply be assessed and corrected. A form that asks everyone what they would want to be different reads as an invitation rather than a verdict.

When the form carries all four, the first session can open on the relationships in the room instead of on history you could have gathered in advance.

Who is the client, and the identified-patient trap

The single most useful thing the intake form does is resist the family’s own framing. Households tend to arrive with an identified patient, the member, often a child or adolescent, whose behaviour is offered as the reason for coming. That framing is rarely the whole picture, and meeting it head-on at intake tends to harden it.

So the form asks every member the same questions: how do you see what brought the family here, and what would you want to be different. Asking a quiet teenager and a frustrated parent the same two questions, in their own space, does two things at once. It collects several genuine perspectives, and it tells the family, before the first session, that the work belongs to all of them. The identified patient is still on the form. They are simply no longer the only one being asked.

Consent and confidentiality are where family work diverges most sharply from individual intake, and where a vague form causes the most trouble later.

Every adult who participates gives informed consent. For any minor, you document who holds legal custody or guardianship, since that determines who can authorise treatment, and custody can be shared or contested in ways that change who must sign. Confidentiality is harder than in individual therapy because the same record and the same room are shared by several people. Decide your stance in advance and write it onto the intake form. Many family therapists adopt a limited-confidentiality or no-secrets policy, meaning that information one member shares privately may be brought, with care, into the family’s work; others hold individual disclosures more tightly. Either way, the family should learn the rule from the form, not discover it mid-treatment. For adolescents in particular, where state law may give the young person their own confidentiality rights, coordinate this section with your adolescent therapy intake form so the two are consistent.

The family therapy intake form, section by section

A template that serves family work tends to move through six sections.

Family roster and structure. Every member, their age, their relationship to one another, who lives in the household, and who else is closely involved. This is where a brief genogram prompt earns its place.
The concern, in each member’s words. A short, private space for each person to describe what brought the family in and what they would want to change.
Family history and patterns. Significant transitions, losses, prior treatment, and how the household has handled strain before.
Safety screen. Any current risk to a member, including conflict that has turned frightening, so that nothing urgent waits for the deeper interview. Pair this with your suicide risk assessment template when an individual screen is warranted.
Goals. What a good outcome would look like, gathered per member, because families often want different things.
Consent, confidentiality, and billing. Signatures from each consenting adult, custody documentation for minors, the confidentiality policy stated plainly, and how family sessions will be billed.

Reading the form before the first session

The accounts the form gathers are only useful if you read them as a set rather than one at a time. Lay the members’ answers side by side and look for the gaps: who names the same problem, who names a different one, and who the household has quietly cast as the cause. Those gaps are the first hypothesis about how the system holds together, and they tell you where the room is likely to be tense before anyone has spoken. Note too who left their section blank, because silence on the page often predicts silence in the chair. Walk in with that map and the opening minutes can belong to the family rather than to paperwork.

How a family intake differs from individual and adolescent intake

An individual intake gathers one account and one consent. A family intake gathers several accounts, maps the household, and manages consent and confidentiality across multiple people, which is why it cannot simply be a longer version of the individual form. It also overlaps with, but is not the same as, an adolescent intake. The adolescent form holds the gap between a teenager and a caregiver; the family form widens that to the whole system and to the relationships among everyone in it. Where a household is bringing both a specific young person and a family-wide concern, many clinicians use the two together, drawing the individual detail from the counseling intake form and the relational frame from this one. The full set of templates lives in the therapy intake form templates guide.

Used well, a family therapy intake form does more than collect information. It quietly tells a family that arrived pointing at one person that, here, the work belongs to all of them, and it gives you the orientation to begin on the relationships rather than on the blame.