Case Notes Template
Create polished case notes for your social work clients using our free case notes template.
Fact Checked by RJ Gumban.
What Is A Case Notes Template
A template is a structure for your case notes that includes headings and pre-formatted spaces for key pieces of information. This template is designed primarily to save you time and improve the quality of your case notes by helping you remember to include important details.
Social workers often will not work with the same client indefinitely, so case notes are an important tool for social workers to help the next social worker who takes on their client after them. Case notes provide the social worker with objective information on your client, but also valuable insights into their progress and what has been effective for them.
Our case notes template is a great option to keep your case notes easy to read, well-formatted and comprehensive.
Printable Case Notes Template
Check out these templates for Case Notes to improve social working documentation, productivity, and treatment outcomes.
How To Use This Template For Case notes
Just follow these easy steps to start using our case notes template in your social work practice.
Step One: Download the template
The first step is to download the template using the link on this page. This will give you a free copy of the interactive PDF version of this template. You can type directly into the interactive text boxes, or you can go on to print out the template and fill it in by hand if that’s more your style.
Step Two: Fill in your client and session details
The header of our template includes spaces for you to add your client’s name, date of birth, your name (as their social worker), the date, the venue of your session, a case ID (if known) and a list of the others present at the session (if applicable).
Step Three: Write the main purpose of the visit
The visit could either be a visit you make to your client’s residence, school or workplace or could refer to a visit your client makes to your offices. Either way, this space is the main focus of this visit- it could be an initial meeting, a well-being check-up, or any other reason you or your client has visited today.
Step Four: Fill in the case notes section
The case notes section is for the body of your case notes, this is where you will include the important details of your visit. This section will be structured differently depending on the nature of the visit, your note-taking style, and the content covered in the visit. Take a look at our case notes example to see how this section might be filled in.
Step Five: Fill in the next steps
The Next Steps section is a dedicated space for your plan for your client. This section is designed to address any issues raised in the body of the case notes section.
Step Six: Add your designation and signature
At the bottom of the template, there is space for your signature and designation. This is important for traceability, and to ensure your compliance with legal, record-keeping requirements.
Step seven: store the case note securely
The final step is to store your case note safely. This case note contains confidential client information and you, therefore, have a legal requirement to store it securely. We recommend doing this electronically to utilize digital encryption.
Case Notes Example (Sample)
To see our case notes template in action, take a look at this sample case note completed using our PDF template. This case note covers a visit to a client’s home by a child social worker.
Download this Case Notes Example here:
Who Can Use this Printable Case Note Template?
This case note template is designed for use by all kinds of social workers. This could include:
- Child social workers
- Medical and public health social workers
- Substance abuse social workers
- School social workers
- Community social workers
- Military social workers
- Mental health social workers.
While each of these specialties will fill in this template a little differently, we have taken care to ensure our template is general enough to allow for all different types of practitioners to utilize it in their case notes. Additionally, trainee social workers, or students observing social work sessions with a licensed social worker, can benefit from using this template to practice taking their own case notes.
Why Is This Template Useful For Social Workers?
This template is designed to save you time and help keep your case notes organized. Additionally, this template offers some useful advantages for social workers:
- Provide evidence of fieldwork requirements: if you’re working towards becoming a licensed social worker, our case notes template provides great evidence of your fieldwork hours and your problem-solving thought process.
- Don’t rely on your memory: social work is a hugely varied field, and as such many different pieces of information may be relevant in a particular case note. It can be easy to forget small things like the date or the name of your client's support person who attended the session with them. With our case notes template’s dedicated basic information section, you won’t need to worry about forgetting these details again!
- Logical layout: this case notes template follows a logical order; starting with the basic information on your client, followed by the purpose of the visit, the body of the case notes, the next steps, and finally your signature. This is a simple chronological layout that will help you to keep your case notes readable.
Why Use Carepatron For Case Notes?
Carepatron provides a state-of-the-art, integrated solution for social workers to manage all of their documentation and administration tasks. Manage your calendar, engage in further communication with your client, and complete other actionable tasks resulting from a client’s case notes all from within Carepatron’s comprehensive practice management software.
Your clients can also access their notes or documentation from you in Carepatron’s client portal on mobile or desktop. Additionally, schedule and conduct video sessions with your clients and start working flexibly to suit your lifestyle, or increase your availability for clients.
Bring your social work practice into the 21st century by automating your email or SMS appointment reminders for your clients, or dictating your case notes with Carepatron’s AI-powered voice-to-text software.
Commonly asked questions
Case notes are likely to be shared with other social workers in the future, and potentially with your client or other third parties such as insurance companies, or other members of your client’s care team. As such, you should avoid subjective opinions, unsupported statements, excessive jargon, and irrelevant detail.
Case notes are crucial for the handover of clients in social work. Without them, the next social worker to help your client will have to start from scratch. Your case notes may also be important for other members of your client’s care team, and additionally, serve as a legal record of the work you have done with your client.
Everyone will have a different idea of what makes a good case note, but it is widely accepted that case notes should be to the point and avoid irrelevant details, specific to your client and their issues, based on objective information and not biased by personal opinion, and written in a style that is legible and understandable for others.
