Social Worker Home Visit Checklist
Make visits to your client’s home less daunting and more doable with our easy-to-use and well-designed social worker home visit checklist.
Fact Checked by Ericka Pingol.
What is a Social Worker Home Visit Checklist?
Social workers may be required to conduct home visits with their clients to ensure their safety or welfare. These checks might be for children in foster care, children needing ongoing checks to ensure their safety, elderly clients living in the community, disabled clients, clients reintegrating with society following incarceration or addiction treatment, or any other clients whose social worker needs to make sure their living conditions and welfare are being addressed.
Some social workers may regularly undertake home visits for their clients, whereas some may find the very idea completely daunting. There can be a lot of things to assess during the home visit, such as the living conditions or any hazards present that could cause your client harm, and ensuring you’re doing your best for your client can add a lot of pressure to not miss a thing.
That’s where our social worker home visit checklist comes in. We’ve split your client’s home into areas so you can systematically work through your checks and ensure the welfare and safety of your client.
Free Social Worker Home Visit Checklists
Check out these note templates for social workers to improve clinical documentation, workflow, and treatment outcomes.
How To Use This Template For Social Worker Home Visit Checklist
To ensure you’re confident incorporating this checklist into your home visits, we’ve created a simple step-by-step guide you can use to familiarize yourself with this home visit checklist. Just follow these simple steps and you’ll be a pro in no time.
Download the PDF
The first step is to get your hands on the checklist template. You can download this template for free from the link on this page, or if you are already a Carepatron user- access this template and many others from our community template library. Once you have the template open, you can either print it out and fill it in by hand, or if you have the means to bring a device to your home visit- keep it digital and fill it in using the interactive PDF checkboxes. This is a good idea for keeping your checklist tidy, easily fixing any mistakes, and improving the security of your document.
Fill in your client’s details
This is an important step for ensuring your note is attached to the correct client record. This step can be done prior to conducting the home visit to maximize your time on site, or if you are unsure of your client's details- fill it in upon arrival at your client’s home. Either way, ensure you get these important details down or your hard work could be lost!
Complete each section of the checklist
As you walk around your client's home, take each room in turn and complete the relevant section of the checklist. You can take these sections in any order, and not necessarily in the order, they are given in the checklist. As long as you are thorough and inspect every room- you’ll be able to check off everything you need to.
Add any additional notes
We know that a home visit can’t be entirely captured using only a checklist, so we have left space for additional notes. These might be records of the family members and their details, any changes to the residents at the property, an explanation of any 0 or 1 scores given, any additional concerns, and a plan for the next steps for your client.
Sign and date the note, and store it securely
The last step is to add your name, signature, and date in the spaces provided at the bottom of the checklist. It’s important that you keep this checklist in a secure location, whether physical or digital, as it contains sensitive and private information about your clients.
Social Worker Home Visit Checklist Example (Sample)
Still unsure about the different parts of this template? We’ve got you covered. Take a look at our example social worker home visit checklist, and you’ll be able to get an idea of what the finished version of this checklist looks like. Please note, yours may look very different depending on your client and the social worker completing it, but we still think it can be useful to see an example.
Download this Social Worker Home Visit Checklist Example here:
.png)
Who Can Use this Printable Social Worker Home Visit Checklist (PDF)?
This home visit checklist is designed for use by all kinds of social workers who conduct home visits as part of their work. We have kept the questions non-specific to any particular specialty, but we think this template would best suit social workers who work with:
- Children or Child Protective Services (CPS)
- The elderly
- Clients recovering from substance abuse or addiction
Additionally, trainee social workers, or students observing home visits with a licensed social worker, can benefit from using this template to practice completing their own home inspections.
Why is This Form Useful For Social Workers?
This form is designed to make home visits easier and keep you organized while you conduct your inspection. Our social worker home visit checklist has a bunch of useful features for social workers, such as:
Split into different rooms
We have separated the checklist into rooms so you can work your way through the house methodically. It can be overwhelming having a long list of checks to do, but one of the best ways of handling big tasks is by splitting them into manageable chunks- which is what we have done here. Don’t worry if your client’s house doesn’t exactly fit these rooms, e.g. they have no outdoor area, or they have multiple living areas. Just use the same section to cover multiple rooms, or cross out questions that aren’t relevant to your client’s home- e.g. if there are no animals or elderly people in the household.
Space for notes
Another useful feature is the space for notes at the end of the checklist. We know you can’t sum everything up into a single number, so we have left space for you to add your professional insights, opinions, and conclusions. Feel free to use this space for the next steps for your clients, your assessment of the outcome of the home visit, or elaborating on any 0 or 1 scores given. This allows you to capture the nuances that are often present following a home visit.
Why Use Carepatron For Social Worker Home Visits?
The information contained in your home visit checklist is highly sensitive and confidential to your client, and therefore it’s of paramount importance that you store this important record securely- and that’s what we do best. Our EHR system is HIPAA-compliant and deploys multiple levels of AES-256 encryption so you can rest assured your confidential social work documents are secure.
As well as keeping your information secure, Carepatron makes it easy to access these records whenever and wherever you need via our mobile or desktop software platforms. Give your social work clients access to their records through their own Carepatron client portal and help to empower them to participate in their care.
Finally, Carepatron comes with all the bells and whistles you’d expect from a state-of-the-art software platform, such as AI-powered dictation software, integrated calendar capability, medical coding, tagging systems, billing and appointment management, and a community library of templates just like this one to help you get ahead and save time. With 24/7 support and over 10,000 medical practitioners who have chosen Carepatron, there’s no reason not to try Carepatron today and see how it can take your social work practice to the next level.
Commonly asked questions
It’s important to be prepared before your home visit, and you can do this by reading over your client’s case notes to refresh your memory of their history, and writing down any particular concerns you want to cover during the visit. Additionally, looking after your own safety is very important, so ensuring someone at your practice knows where you are going and when you expect to be back is a great idea, and you may have extra steps in place at your practice like organizing a partner to come with you, scheduling check-in phone calls, or asking your clients to secure any dogs prior to your visit.
This checklist is designed to be a tool to help you cover everything you need to during your home visit. There can be a lot of things you are expected to check, and so having a written list is a great help to ensure you cover everything you need to.
This will depend on your client and their history with you, but it’s a good idea to ensure the questions you ask are non-judgmental to help your clients feel comfortable enough with you to answer honestly. After all, you both want the same thing- to do the best for your client. Some questions you might ask are: “have there been any changes to the family members living here since we last spoke?” or “what is your escape route in the event of a fire?”. The questions you ask should be guided by any areas of concern you identify during your visit, and the answers can be noted in the Notes section at the end of the template.
