Meet them on text, but do it from a number that isn't yours, with the same scheduling-only scope you'd apply to anyone else.

The reason this question comes up at all is that text-only clients are the group that most reliably forces therapists onto their personal handset. Everything else in the toolkit fails for them. A phone call goes unanswered. An email is never opened. A portal message requires them to log into an account they never activated. So the therapist reaches for the phone in their pocket, because it's the only thing that works.

One practitioner describes exactly this: working in a group clinic with call routing but no texting capability, and finding that for a couple of adolescent clients the only route is text — while being uncomfortable using their personal line to do it.

The answer isn't to insist they use a channel they won't use. It's to make text available on a footing you can live with: a second number, written consent that covers the client and the guardian, and a clear scope so the channel doesn't become the therapy.

Why won't they use anything else?

It's worth understanding rather than treating as difficulty, because it changes how you respond.

Calls from unknown numbers get ignored as a default habit, especially by anyone under about thirty. Your careful callback is indistinguishable from spam.

Email isn't a live channel for a large number of people. It's where receipts go.

Portals require an account. The security model depends on the client authenticating, and a meaningful share of clients never complete that step. The question therapists ask about this is telling: is there a way to message clients securely without requiring them to sign into an account? The reason it gets asked repeatedly is that the honest answer is unsatisfying.

Voice is harder than text for some people, and that's often clinically relevant rather than incidental. Someone with social anxiety may be able to confirm an appointment by text and genuinely unable to make the call.

What has to be in place before I do this?

A number that isn't your personal one. This is the whole ballgame, and it's the cheapest part. A second line, an eSIM, a prepaid handset — any of them.

Consent from the right people. For an adult client, from them. For a young person, from the client and from whoever holds decision-making authority, and the scope should be stated to both.

A stated scope and cadence. What the channel is for, and when you check it. Text implies immediacy, and text-only clients often assume it more strongly.

Somewhere the messages live. A thread in your personal messaging app, mixed in with everything else in your life and tied to a device, is the version that causes problems later. A rule of thumb from practitioners is that any text should have a clinical note attached to it.

None of that changes because the client is young. The psychotherapy College's requirement is consent to the medium itself — registrants "obtain informed consent from clients regarding the use of electronic communication media in the provision of services" — and its record contents include "a notation of all in-session and out-of-session contacts with a client or their authorized representative," with "letters, emails, texts, and telephone calls" given as the examples (CRPO Professional Practice Standards, Standards 3.4 and 5.1). That phrase, authorized representative, is the one that reaches the guardian's messages as well as the client's.

The social work College asks that registrants using online platforms explain "the limits of confidentiality" before or during the first online meeting "and document this conversation" (OCSWSSW, Interpretation 5.3.1). On the thread itself it is looser than practitioners assume: correspondence and messages sit in the list of what a record may include rather than must — but once they are in, "these tools cannot be removed and shall be managed in the same way as other documents in the record" (OCSWSSW, Interpretation 4.1.2).

Which is the practical reason to decide where the messages live before the first one arrives, rather than after a year of them.

How do I keep it from becoming therapy by text?

Same discipline as any other client, applied earlier, because text-only clients are more likely to lead with content.

Answer scheduling with scheduling. When something substantive arrives, acknowledge the person in one line and move it to the session. Do it the first time.

Where it differs: with a young person, a very short reply can read as coldness in a way it wouldn't with an adult. Warmth in six words is a skill worth practising — "That sounds hard. Let's start there Thursday." carries the acknowledgement without opening the channel.

And be realistic about crisis. A client who is text-only will text you in a bad moment, because it's the channel they have. That makes it more important, not less, that the emergency route was named at the start and named again in whatever automatic reply goes out when you're not there.

What about guardians?

Handle them as a separate relationship with a separate arrangement.

If you're texting a young person about appointments, someone is probably also paying invoices and arranging transport, and that person will text you too. The heaviest after-hours contact many therapists describe comes from parents rather than clients, often at length and at odd times.

Give the guardian the same scope and cadence in writing, and be explicit about what you will and won't discuss with them — which is a clinical and consent question you've likely already worked out, and which the text thread will test.

Is a second number really necessary just for this?

Yes, and it is the cheapest of these problems to fix.

The alternative is that a group of clients who are, by definition, comfortable texting have your personal number in their phones — and will still have it in five years, along with whoever else ends up with that handset in the meantime.

If cost is the obstacle, the least expensive real option is usually a prepaid line. It sends SMS, it costs less than most practice software, and it requires no evaluation of anything. That is a completely legitimate answer, and if it's what gets you off your personal number this month, take it.

The short version

Text-only clients are not being difficult; they're using the channel that works for them. Serve it — from a separate number, with consent that covers guardians, a scope stated up front, and a decision about where those messages live.

About Rivet

Rivet is a Canadian practice line built for therapists — a separate number for calls, texts and voicemail, with video sessions and clinical tools in the same place. Your data stays in Canada, and transcription runs on Rivet's own hardware rather than a third-party AI service.

One plan, $65 CAD a month, everything included. Fourteen-day trial, no card.

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