Referring someone: what to send, and what not to.
For school counselors, physicians, courts, pastors and anyone else who sends people here. What the center treats and does not, the current wait, the fee table, and a referral form that carries no clinical detail through this website.
A good fit
Anxiety, depression, grief, life changes, stress in a family or a couple, teens 13 and up with a parent involved, parents who need skills, and a hard month that needs six sessions and no diagnosis. Groups for all of these.
Languages: English and Spanish.
Refer elsewhere
Psychiatric medication (we refer to the county clinic and coordinate with the prescriber), crisis and safety assessments (988 and the county crisis line, 24 hours), residential or inpatient care, substance-use treatment as a primary need, forensic evaluations and custody reports. If we are not the right place, the intake coordinator says so on the first call and names who is.
One desk, one coordinator
A referral goes to the intake coordinator and nowhere else; counselors hear a name only once the person has asked for a first call themselves. What you send us is kept in the practice system under the client’s own record once it exists, and shredded if it never does.
The sliding scale
Set on the intake call from household size and income, on the client's word. The fee fund covers the gap when the lowest fee is too much; the county contract covers short-term support entirely.
Right now: about 3 weeks
From the intake call to a first session. A group is usually sooner; daytime slots are sooner than evenings; a client who can see any of the counselors taking new clients is seen before one who asks for a particular person. The intake coordinator updates this number every Monday.
Urgent: the center does not run a crisis service. For anyone at risk today, 988 or the county line, 555-0100, 24 hours.
What to send
This form tells the intake coordinator that a referral is coming and who is sending it. It carries no information about the person being referred — not a name, not a reason. The client (or a parent) calls, or gives permission for the office to call them; any clinical detail comes by phone or by the practice portal's referral upload. Demonstration: it sends nothing and stores nothing.
What the office does
Within two business days the intake coordinator calls you back, confirms the fit, and either takes the client's number (with their permission, which you confirm) or waits for the client to call.
Clinical detail — a diagnosis, medication, what happened — goes by phone to the intake coordinator, or through the practice portal's referral upload, which is the center's system under a signed agreement. Never by this website, and please not by ordinary email.
Feedback to you: with the client's written consent, one line when they start and one when they finish. Without it, nothing, and the office will say so rather than leave you guessing.
This is the sample center's practice, written for the demonstration. A real center's rules come from its own policy, its state and its licensing boards; this page reports a practice, it does not advise one.