Client Intake & Screening Standards

1. Purpose and Application

1.1 This guideline states the standards of intake and screening expected of non-licensed practitioners trained and certified by AccrediPro University. It is prepared by the Office of Academic Publications and reviewed by the Clinical Faculty Board, and it applies before any working session takes place.

1.2 The guideline applies to every practitioner who holds a University credential and takes on clients in a coaching, educational, or lifestyle-support capacity. A practitioner who also holds a professional licence observes, in addition, whatever intake standards that licence imposes.

1.3 This document is the companion of the University's guideline on scope of practice and referral. Intake is where that guideline is applied for the first time: the majority of referrals a careful practitioner ever makes are made before an engagement begins.

1.4 Nothing here replaces the law of the practitioner's jurisdiction, which prevails wherever the two differ.

2. Definitions

2.1 Intake. The structured process — conversation and record together — by which a practitioner establishes who a prospective client is, what she seeks, and whether non-clinical support is suitable for her.

2.2 Screening. The portion of intake directed at suitability: deliberate, structured attention to any indication that the presentation belongs, in whole or in part, to licensed care.

2.3 Suitability. The judgement, recorded at intake, that a prospective engagement falls within the boundary of non-clinical practice as defined in the University's scope-of-practice guideline.

2.4 Scope agreement. The written agreement, signed before the first working session, in which the nature and limits of the services are stated and accepted.

2.5 Crisis disclosure. Any disclosure of intent or risk of harm to self or others, or of a presentation requiring emergency care.

3. Principles of Intake

3.1 No services before intake. A practitioner shall not begin working sessions before intake is complete and the scope agreement is signed. A preliminary conversation held to decide whether to proceed is part of intake, not an exception to it.

3.2 Intake is a professional act, not an administrative one. Its object is the client's safety and the engagement's honesty, and it is conducted with the same care as the work it precedes.

3.3 Scope is stated first. A prospective client is told plainly, before anything else is agreed, that the services offered are educational and supportive — coaching, structure, and accountability — and are not medical, psychological, or nutritional treatment, and not a substitute for any of these.

3.4 Screening favours referral. Doubt at intake resolves the way doubt resolves everywhere in non-clinical practice: toward licensed care. Declining an engagement well is a professional outcome, not a lost one.

3.5 Intake attends to readiness as well as suitability. Behaviour change proceeds by stages rather than decisions (Prochaska & DiClemente, 1983), and an intake conversation is conducted in the spirit the motivational-interviewing literature describes — evoking the client's own reasons rather than supplying the practitioner's (Miller & Rollnick, 2013). A client pressed into an engagement she did not choose is poorly served twice: once at intake, and once at every session after it.

3.6 Intake is bounded in time. It is ordinarily completed in one sitting, or two where the record requires it, and it is not allowed to become an unpaid engagement conducted under another name. Where intake cannot reach a decision — because information is missing, or because a referral must be answered first — the practitioner says so, states what is needed, and closes the conversation until it is available.

4. The Intake Record

4.1 A record is made of every intake, whether or not the engagement proceeds. Its minimum contents are the following:

(a) Identity and contact details, and an emergency contact where the client will give one.

(b) The client's stated goals, in her own words.

(c) Whether the client is currently under the care of a physician, therapist, or other licensed professional, and — as volunteered — for what.

(d) Current medications and supplements, recorded as context and never advised upon.

(e) Relevant history, as and only as the client volunteers it.

(f) Prior attempts at the change now sought, and what came of them.

(g) The client's expectations of the engagement, and any expectation the practitioner has had to correct.

(h) The outcome of screening under Section 5, including any referral made.

(i) The signed scope agreement.

4.2 The record contains what the client said, not what the practitioner suspects. Speculative clinical language has no place in an intake record: a practitioner writes 'client reports low mood most days', and never a name for it.

4.3 Where an engagement is declined, a brief record is kept all the same — the reason, and any referral given. A declined intake with a good referral is intake done properly.

5. Screening for Suitability

5.1 Non-clinical support is suitable where the client's goals concern habits, education, structure, accountability, or general wellbeing, and where any diagnosed condition in the picture is under licensed care.

5.2 An engagement shall not begin without prior referral — or shall begin only alongside licensed care, and confined to support of it — where intake reveals any of the following:

(a) Mood, anxiety, or trauma symptoms that are unassessed, escalating, or interfering with daily functioning.

(b) Disclosure or apparent signs of an active eating disorder.

(c) Active dependence on alcohol or other substances.

(d) Physical symptoms without a diagnosed explanation.

(e) A chronic condition that appears unmanaged or destabilised.

(f) A primary motivation that is, in substance, the treatment of a diagnosed disease.

(g) A recent psychiatric hospitalisation or crisis without current licensed care.

(h) A prospective client who is a minor. Engagements with minors, where the practitioner's specialism and jurisdiction permit them at all, begin only with the written consent of a parent or guardian, with the parent or guardian party to the scope agreement, and with the screening of this section applied at a standard no less careful than for an adult.

5.3 Practitioners do not administer diagnostic instruments. Structured screening tools — the PHQ-9 for depression (Kroenke, Spitzer, & Williams, 2001), the GAD-7 for anxiety (Spitzer et al., 2006), the Columbia scale for suicide risk (Posner et al., 2011) — belong to licensed assessment, and their administration or scoring by a non-licensed practitioner would itself be a breach of scope. The practitioner's screening instrument is structured attention: listening, asking plain questions, and taking the answers seriously.

5.4 Screening is not diagnosis. Identifying an indication for referral is not identifying a condition, and the record shall reflect the difference: the indication is recorded in the client's words, the referral in the practitioner's.

6. Crisis Disclosure Protocol

6.1 Where a prospective or current client discloses intent or plan of harm to herself or another person, the practitioner sets aside the ordinary course of intake or session and applies this section.

6.2 Where the risk is immediate, the practitioner directs the client to emergency services at once — in the United States, to 911 or to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — and, where the contact is live and the risk is acute, summons help herself and remains in contact as long as it is reasonable to do so.

6.3 Where the disclosure indicates risk that is serious but not immediate, the practitioner refers promptly to licensed mental health care, and the engagement does not proceed on that matter, in accordance with the referral provisions of the scope-of-practice guideline.

6.4 The disclosure is documented the same day: the time, the words spoken as nearly as memory allows, the action taken, and the information given to the client.

6.5 The limits of confidentiality — including that disclosures of imminent risk will be acted upon — are stated in the scope agreement, so that no client learns them for the first time in a crisis.

6.6 After any application of this section, the practitioner reviews the event — with a supervisor, mentor, or peer where one is available — and records that the review took place. Crisis response is a skill maintained by examination, not by hoping the occasion does not recur.

7. The Scope Agreement

7.1 A written scope agreement is signed before the first working session. It states, at minimum:

(a) That the services are coaching, education, and support, and are not the diagnosis or treatment of any condition.

(b) That the practitioner is not acting as a licensed clinician in the engagement, whatever qualifications she holds.

(c) The referral policy: that matters outside scope are referred to licensed care, in accordance with the University's published guidelines.

(d) Confidentiality and its limits, including the crisis provisions of Section 6.

(e) Fees, schedule, and cancellation terms, in full and in advance.

(f) How the engagement may be ended, by either party.

7.2 The agreement is written to be understood, not to impress. A client who has not understood the scope has not agreed to it, and the deficiency is the practitioner's to repair.

8. Re-screening and Ongoing Vigilance

8.1 Screening does not end at intake. Presentations change, and an indication listed in Section 5 that appears mid-engagement is treated exactly as it would have been at intake: referral first, and work on the affected matter suspended until licensed care has seen it.

8.2 In long engagements, the practitioner re-confirms the client's goals and current care arrangements at reasonable intervals, and no less than annually. The re-confirmation is recorded.

8.3 The intake record is a living part of the engagement record: material changes — a new diagnosis, a new medication, a new provider — are entered as they become known.

8.4 A practitioner reviews her own intake practice annually against this guideline: the questions she asks, the agreement she uses, and the referrals her screening produced. An intake process that has referred no one in a year of ordinary practice is more likely to be under-screening than blessed.

9. Review and Amendment

9.1 This guideline was prepared by the Office of Academic Publications and reviewed by the Clinical Faculty Board. It stands on an annual review cycle, and is reviewed earlier whenever the Board so directs. Amendments are published in the University's research library and supersede prior text on publication.