A client intake form is the document a new client completes before or at the first session, collecting the facts you would otherwise spend twenty clinical minutes writing down: who they are, how to reach them, who else is involved in their care, what brings them, and what you need to know before you begin.

Three things it is not. It is not the informed consent to service — that is a separate document about what therapy is, what it costs and what its limits are. It is not the communications consent covering phone, text and email. And it is not an assessment; a form cannot triage, and treating it as though it can is how practices end up with eleven pages nobody reads.

The word "intake" is doing double duty in most conversations. It means the form, and it also means the process — the first call, the screening conversation, the consent paperwork and the first session together. When someone asks what to put in their intake, ask which of the two they mean, because the answers are different.

What is the form actually for?

Three jobs, in order of how much they matter.

It gets the file started. Ontario's psychology College requires each record to contain "Identifying information about the client, including name, date of birth, address and (if available) telephone number and email address of each service recipient" and "A description of any presenting problem and of any history relevant to the problem" (CPBAO Standard 9.2). The form is simply the cheapest way to collect that.

It moves administration out of the session. Every field on the form is a question you are not asking in the room.

It sets expectations before anyone is in a hurry. Fees, cancellation, how you respond to messages, what happens in a crisis — all easier to read on a page than to hear for the first time in week three.

Is the intake form part of the clinical record?

Once it is filled in and you have acted on it, treat it as though it is. The consequence people underestimate is not storage but access: Ontario's health privacy statute gives an individual "a right of access to a record of personal health information about the individual that is in the custody or under the control of a health information custodian", and a right to "request in writing that the custodian correct the record" (PHIPA ss. 52, 55).

Whatever the form says, the client can ask to read it. Some practitioners find that changes how they write the internal notes section — which is a reason to have one, not a reason to be vague.

What happens to the form if they never become a client?

This is the question nobody asks until they have a drawer of them, and Ontario's psychology College is unusually direct about it:

"Registrants are not obliged to retain personally identifiable information which a person has not provided consent to collect, inquiries about services which did not result in the provision of services, or for recipients of prevention, public education, group training, emergency or post- emergency group services, or group screening services"

(CPBAO Standard 9.4(d))

Read the modal verb carefully. It says you are not obliged to retain an enquiry that did not become a service. It does not say you must delete it, and it is one College speaking for one profession in one province. But it is the clearest published Canadian answer available on the enquiry that went nowhere, and it points the same way as the general principle: do not keep what you cannot justify keeping.

Which privacy law governs what the form collects?

It depends where you practise, and the intuitive answer is wrong often enough to be worth checking. Alberta's psychology regulator works the example through explicitly:

"Example 3: A psychologist recently opened their own clinic to provide psychological services to clients. The psychologist collects health information from a client as part of the intake process. PIPA governs this collection of information as the psychologist is working in a private clinic and not a public body. Additionally, psychologists are not defined as custodians under the HIA."

(College of Alberta Psychologists, Interpretive Guide: Privacy Legislation in Alberta)

Alberta has a health information act, and a solo psychology practice is not inside it. Ontario is arranged differently again. This is why an American template's privacy page cannot simply be relabelled — there is no single national statute to relabel it to.

Does a solo practice really need one?

Yes, and it can be one page. The scale objection is one the Ontario privacy commissioner has already answered, in the course of guidance on record-keeping: "the steps that are reasonable for a large hospital, with many agents sharing multiple health record systems, may differ from what is reasonable for a small community practice with one or two health care practitioners using one electronic medical record system" (IPC).

Reasonable is scaled to the practice. A one-page form kept somewhere sensible is a defensible answer for a practice of one, and it is a better answer than a sixteen-page pack copied from a group clinic and never revised.

The failure mode is the opposite of what new practitioners fear. It is not the form that was too short. It is the form that asked for a social insurance number because the template had a box for one — the federal privacy commissioner's test being that "Individuals cannot be required to consent to the collection, use or disclosure of personal information beyond what is necessary to provide the product or service" (OPC).

The short version

The form is a collection device, not a clinical instrument. It exists to start the file, clear the admin out of the first session, and put the fee and the boundaries in writing while everyone is calm. One page, every field defensible, and a decision made in advance about the ones that never turn into clients.

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