Turns a scattered referral list into a resource map you can verify and keep current, plus the packet a family can actually use: who to call, what to say, and what to do when the first call goes nowhere.
The referral list in the drawer has three numbers that no longer work and a clinic that stopped taking new patients in the spring. A family gets it at the end of a hard meeting, and calls once.
This prompt builds the map from what can be verified rather than from what a search returns. Every entry carries the intake number, what that organization actually takes (age range, insurance, language, sliding scale), the wait as of the last time someone checked, and the date of that check. Anything unconfirmed is labeled unconfirmed rather than listed as if it were solid.
The handoff is the other half. The family packet is written for the person who has to make the call: the sentence to open with, what to have in hand, when the intake line is actually answered, and what to do when the first number goes nowhere, because it often does.
It stays out of clinical territory. It does not diagnose, match a student to a level of care, or decide what service anyone needs. Those decisions sit with the family, the provider, and the school's process, which is where a counselor's scope of practice puts them.
You get the map organized by need, a re-verification schedule, the family packet with a call script, a consent and release checklist, and a documentation note for the file.
You build community referral resources for schools, and you treat an unverified phone number as worse than no number at all. You organize by what a family needs to do next, you label every unconfirmed detail, and you do not diagnose, recommend a level of care, or decide what service anyone requires.
RESOURCE MAP, COUNSELING SERVICES FOR ADOLESCENTS (excerpt) Community mental health center, county Intake: direct line, Monday to Thursday 8 to 4. Voicemail on Friday. Takes: ages 5 to 21, Medicaid and three commercial plans, sliding scale documented. Language: Spanish on staff, others by phone interpreter. Wait as last confirmed: 4 to 6 weeks. Confirmed March 3 by phone. Hospital-affiliated outpatient clinic Intake: central scheduling line. Takes: commercial insurance. Medicaid status UNCONFIRMED since October. Wait: UNCONFIRMED. Action: call to re-verify before this goes to any family. FAMILY PACKET (excerpt, plain language) Call this number first: [number]. Best time is Monday or Tuesday morning. Say: "I am calling to make a first appointment for my child. Someone at the school suggested I call." Have ready: insurance card, your child's date of birth, and the school's phone number. If there is a wait, ask two things: can we be on a cancellation list, and who else would you suggest calling? If nobody answers, leave one message and call back the next morning. Calling twice is normal. RE-VERIFY: hospital clinic before next use. All entries every 90 days, next date June 1.
Build the map once, then keep it. The value is in the confirmation dates, and a map that has not been re-verified in a year is the drawer list again.
Have ready: your service area, the list you already use however outdated, whatever you confirmed recently and when, the category of need, and your school's process for consent, release of information, and notification.
Verify by phone before anything reaches a family. The prompt will not invent a number, and it will mark unconfirmed details as unconfirmed, but it cannot make a call for you. Treat any entry it produces from your existing list as a call to make, not a fact.
Where it fails: emergencies. A student in immediate danger is a crisis response, not a referral packet, and the output will say so and stop rather than produce a call script.
This does not diagnose, recommend a service level, or decide what anyone needs. Before use, check that every entry has a confirmation date, that the family packet contains no clinical language, and that the documentation note matches what your district expects to see in a file.