The Psychologist's Referral Handover Checklist

Every professional series in this library ends with the same artefact in a different genre: the one-page handover which circulates when a client hires support workers. The nursing version focuses on the body, the casework version on the relational system, the OT version on function and the mental health version on engagement.

The psychologist's version is a constrained one, which the collaboration article named: no other profession's handover is so useful and so sealed at the same time. The document is supposed to give a worker the capacity to really be useful around a client whose inner life the psychologist knows in detail, and yet not transmit that inner life. Of all the genres, it is the most difficult one to write, and one of the most useful, and just because of that it has been the most thoroughly edited in the library.

The checklist

The person, as he or she would like to be treated. Two or three sentences created with the client, using their own words: what they are interested in, how they think a good interaction should feel from the client's side, how they would like to be treated. In this version of the genre the section does double duty, as this will be the worker's only characterisation, meaning the section takes on the full responsibility of the worker meeting a person instead of a caseload entry.

The fit notes. The rapport specification of the previous entry in this series, the temperature, speed and demand profile that assists, the ground that opens contact, and the preconditions if there are any. This is the knowledge about being with the client and nothing to do with why.

The scaffolding brief. The purpose of it, in the context that this series has created, the routine anchors, the design for activation at this grade, the flex for harder weeks, the fade direction. Task-level, doing-language and exactly what the short genre dictates.

The boundary paragraph. Three-part text from the article on boundaries, word for word, what is helpful, what to pass along, what is not being asked, no techniques, no counselling, no homework enforcement, with the protective language intact. In the psychologist's handover, this part isn't optional furniture, it's the load-bearing wall.

The watch-and-report frame. Observations to send (in observational language) at the agreed cadence, as per the collaboration article, and escalation lanes from this library's mental health series (if risk demands), what to observe, to whom to refer, what not to do.

Scope of consent (where possible) in the client's own words. What the client agreed, recorded so that both worker and client will be able to point to it, and the date of the review, as in this genre above all, a stale document misrepresents someone with authority.

What is deliberately absent

The discipline of the genre is what it omits, and naming it is the way it prevents its accidental repair. No diagnosis, unless the client has specifically requested to provide it. No history. No formulation, no matter how comprehensive. No session content, no matter the time. No "background" section, since background is where the frame drips by the drops. The test for every candidate sentence is the collaboration article's test, scaffolding or work, applied at document level, and the discipline holds because the rest is not a gap, but what the previous sections accomplish is enough. It is the design.

How this plays out in practice

Imagine two workers beginning with similar clients, both with complex trauma histories, both psychologically well known to their treating clinicians. The first comes with a well-meaning reference containing "relevant background": in a month she is dealing with a client's past in her own mind on each shift, carefully handling wounds which she was not prepared to carry, and the client, knowing this, starts to monitor the worker's awareness of her, precisely the burden which support was intended to remove. The second knows what mornings are for, what to say and not say, what to pass along, what is not hers to do, and nothing more; the relationship that develops is the first in years with someone who knows her only as she presents. When she reviews the relationship at the conclusion of a therapy session, the client states that it is the most relaxing one. That sentence is the genre's whole argument.

Next steps

Construct the template using the 6 sections and have the first one written with a client, in session, as shared work, including the conversation about what stays out. The document you will create will be brief. It is a craft that's short.