Write family therapy notes about what happened between people, not about what each person privately disclosed. Record who attended, the agreed focus, the interaction you observed, your systemic formulation and the plan. Australian psychologists must also record why seeing the family together is appropriate for every client in the room.
That last requirement is a regulatory obligation, not a style preference, and almost no family therapy note template prompts for it. Family work also breaks three assumptions built into ordinary note-taking: that one session equals one client, that the retention clock is seven years, and that the person you are treating is the person in front of you.
Whose record does a family therapy note go in?
This is the question every overseas guide answers wrongly for Australian practice. American resources tell you to focus on the "identified patient" because that is whose insurance is billed. Australian funding does not work that way, so the billing answer does not settle the record answer.
Decide it deliberately, then apply it consistently:
- A family file, with each attending member also recorded as a client of your practice. This matches the modality and keeps the narrative continuous. The cost arrives later, when an access request or subpoena forces you to separate material about people who did not make the request.
- The referred client's file, with family sessions recorded as part of their treatment and other members documented only as participants. This is cleaner for access, and it is the structure Medicare-funded work usually implies. It fits poorly if you are genuinely treating the system.
Neither is mandated. What is indefensible is drifting into one by accident and discovering which you chose when a lawyer asks.
What does the Psychology Board require you to record?
The Code of conduct for psychologists, which took effect on 1 December 2025 and is now a condition of registration, addresses this directly in section 4.10, "Simultaneous services":
Read the verb. Not consider. Consider and record. This creates a positive documentation duty that has no equivalent in individual work, and it applies to every client in the room, including the eight-year-old who was brought along rather than referred.
The code is also explicit that consent must be free "from undue influence by other clients", which in family work is a live clinical problem rather than a formality. A parent who answers on a teenager's behalf has not given you the teenager's consent.
Section 8.5 governs the records themselves: keep them "factual, objective", ensure they "show respect for clients and associated parties, and do not include demeaning or derogatory remarks", and make them at the time or as soon as possible afterwards. That standard bites hardest in family work, because the raw material of a family session is people characterising each other unkindly. Record that a parent described their son as lazy. Do not adopt the description.
How long must family therapy notes be kept?
Longer than you think, and this is the most commonly missed fact in family work. Section 8.5(g) of the code sets minimum retention at seven years since the last entry for adult clients, but for anyone under 18 at the time of the last entry, the record must be kept until after their 25th birthday.
A family session that includes a nine-year-old therefore carries a retention obligation of roughly sixteen years, not seven. If you keep one combined family file, the longest clock in the room governs the whole file. Our guide to how long to keep clinical records in Australia covers the state-by-state variations that sit on top of this.
Is family therapy protected from being used in court?
Usually not, and clinicians routinely assume the opposite.
The confidentiality and inadmissibility provisions in the Family Law Act 1975 attach to a role, not to an activity. Section 10C defines a "family counsellor" as someone accredited under the Accreditation Rules, authorised to act for an organisation designated by the Minister, or authorised under section 281 of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia Act 2021. A registered psychologist doing family therapy in private practice is not a family counsellor merely by virtue of seeing a family, and gets none of the protection.
Where the protection does apply, section 10E makes evidence of anything said in family counselling inadmissible in any court. Two features matter for family therapists specifically:
- The protection extends to referrals. Section 10E(1)(b) covers a professional to whom a family counsellor refers a person, and section 10E(4) obliges the referring counsellor to tell that professional. You may be inside the protection without having been informed.
- Child abuse is carved out. Section 10E(2) removes the protection from an adult's admission that a child has been abused or is at risk, and from a child's own disclosure of abuse, unless the court has sufficient evidence from other sources. The single most consequential thing likely to be said in a family session is the thing least protected.
Separately, section 10D(3)(b) means that consent to disclose a communication made by a child under 18 must come from each person with parental responsibility, or from a court. In a separated family, one parent's signature is not consent.
What if one family member asks for the notes?
Treat it as a redaction task, not a yes-or-no decision.
Under Australian Privacy Principle 12, each individual has a right of access to their own personal information. An organisation may refuse where access would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of other individuals (APP 12.3(b)), but the OAIC's guidance is that before relying on a refusal ground an entity should consider whether redacting some information would let access proceed. APP 12.6 also allows access through a mutually agreed intermediary.
The practical consequence runs backwards into how you write. A note that braids four people's disclosures into one paragraph is a note you cannot redact. A note that attributes clearly, and keeps private individual disclosures out of the shared record, can be released in part without a fight.
Does Medicare fund family therapy in Australia?
Not as most clinicians imagine, and the billing rules have a direct documentation consequence.
Better Access funds individual and group services. It also has specific family and carer participation items, which for a registered psychologist are 80102, 80106, 80112 and 80116. According to Services Australia, those services are capped at two per calendar year, must be claimed under the patient's Medicare number, count towards the patient's individual service limit, cannot be used to treat the family member for a mental health condition, and are only available where the patient is not in attendance.
So the note-writing test is concrete. If you bill a family participation item, the note belongs in the referred patient's record, must show the patient was absent, and must read as work done in service of that patient's treatment. A note that reads as though you assessed and treated the family member describes a service that item does not cover.
What does a good family therapy note look like?
The following is a fictional example, written to the standard above.
Note what it does. It records the mode-appropriateness reasoning that section 4.10 demands. It describes interaction rather than transcribing dialogue. It attributes observations to named people so the note can be redacted later. It states what was not done, so silence is not read as a normal finding. And it contains no adopted characterisations of anyone.
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Frequently asked questions
Should I keep separate private notes on individual family members? You can keep individually attributed material in each person's own file, and that is often the cleaner structure. Be aware that a note is discoverable and accessible regardless of what you label it. Australia has no "psychotherapy notes" carve-out equivalent to the American one.
Do I need consent from every family member, including children? Yes, from every person receiving the service, appropriate to their age and capacity. Section 4.10 requires reasonable steps to ensure consent is free from undue influence by other clients, which in practice means asking the young person separately.
What if one parent withdraws consent mid-treatment? Their material stops being collected, but the record already made stays. Document the withdrawal, the date, what you told the family about its effect on the work, and your clinical reasoning about continuing or ending conjoint sessions.
How is a family note different from a couples or group note? The same section 4.10 duty applies to all three, but the formulation and the retention clock differ. See our guides to couples therapy notes and group therapy notes. For the individual-work foundations, start with intake assessment, treatment plans and mental health progress notes.
This article is general information about documentation practice, not legal or clinical advice. Retention periods, mandatory reporting duties and health records legislation vary between states and territories. Check your own jurisdiction's requirements and your professional indemnity insurer's guidance.