SIRP Notes: Format + Template
A SIRP note is a progress note with four labeled sections: Situation, Intervention, Response, and Plan. It opens with the context of the contact, then records what you did, how the client reacted, and what happens next. Crisis teams and case managers favor SIRP because each contact is episodic, so every note has to stand alone.
Skip ahead to the blank SIRP note template if that’s all you need. It’s free, no email required, as a fillable PDF.
What Does SIRP Stand For?
SIRP stands for Situation, Intervention, Response, Plan. Each letter is a labeled section. Situation sets the scene: who, where, and why this contact is happening now. Intervention records what you did, Response records how the client reacted, and Plan commits to next steps. Unlike SOAP, there is no split between subjective and objective information; the client’s report and your observations both live inside the Situation.
Section | What it captures | Example line |
|---|---|---|
S: Situation | Why the contact happened and its context: presenting problem, the client’s report, your observations, risk screening. | “Client walked in without an appointment after receiving an eviction notice; reports two nights without sleep.” |
I: Intervention | What you did during the contact: assessment, de-escalation, skills, safety planning, calls, referrals. | “Reviewed and updated safety plan; called shelter with client present and confirmed a bed.” |
R: Response | How the client reacted, in their words and observable behavior. | “Speech slowed over the contact; client rated distress 4/10, down from 8/10 at arrival.” |
P: Plan | Next steps with owners and timeframes, including follow-up and the escalation condition. | “Case manager to call tomorrow before noon; prescriber appointment booked for Thursday.” |
S: Situation
The Situation section answers why this note exists: who the client is, how the contact started (scheduled, walk-in, phone, mobile call-out), what the client reports, what you observe, and the result of any risk screen. It is the widest section in the format and the reason agencies pick it. Think of it as the note’s establishing shot. In crisis and case-management work, the reader is often seeing the chart cold, an after-hours worker or a covering case manager, so the Situation has to carry enough context that the rest of the note makes sense without the previous ten. A quick structured pass over appearance, speech, affect, and orientation, borrowed from the mental status exam cheat sheet, fills the observation half in about a minute.
I: Intervention
What you actually did, named specifically. “Provided support” tells a reviewer nothing. “Guided paced breathing for five minutes, reviewed the safety plan, called the pharmacy with the client present” tells them everything. Record times in crisis contacts; when an incident gets reviewed, the timeline gets rebuilt from this section.
R: Response
The client’s reaction to what you did: their words, a changed rating, observable behavior, acceptance or refusal. The Response belongs to the client. “Contact went well” is your opinion; “client rated distress 4/10, down from 8/10, and accepted the shelter placement” is a response. Refusals go here too, stated plainly. A documented refusal protects the client and protects you.
P: Plan
Next steps with owners and clocks: who follows up and when, appointments booked, what the client agreed to do, and what triggers escalation. In crisis work the Plan is the handoff. Write it so the person making tomorrow’s call knows exactly what they are checking on.
When Do Agencies Prefer SIRP Notes?
SIRP shows up most in crisis services and case management: mobile crisis teams, crisis lines and walk-in clinics, assertive community treatment, and county or community behavioral health programs. These settings share one condition. Contacts are unscheduled or irregular, and the next reader is rarely the last writer, so the note cannot lean on the chart around it. The Situation section is what makes a note survive that reading condition.
US crisis care runs through call centers, mobile teams, and stabilization programs (SAMHSA, 2025), and one client can touch all three in a week. A SIRP note written at 2 a.m. by a mobile team has to make sense to a case manager at 9 a.m. who was not there. Weekly outpatient therapy is the opposite case: context accumulates session over session, so a SOAP or BIRP note can assume the reader knows the file. If your contacts are scheduled and continuous, the comparison table below will probably point you elsewhere.
How to Write a SIRP Note (Step by Step)
Write the sections in order and keep each one tight. The format does the organizing for you.
Set the scene (S). How the contact started, what the client reports, what you observe, and the risk screen result. Name the screen you used; for suicide risk that is often the Columbia Protocol (C-SSRS).
Record what you did (I). Specific actions, with times where they matter. If you built or revised a safety plan, say which one; the Stanley-Brown Safety Planning Intervention is the widely used standard.
Record what it produced (R). The client’s words, ratings, behavior, and what they accepted or refused.
Commit to next steps (P). An owner and a timeframe on every step, plus the condition that triggers escalation.
Reread as the next reader. Could someone who has never met this client act on the note tonight? If not, the gap is almost always a thin Situation or an ownerless Plan.
For the wider documentation habit this sits inside (timing, frequency, retention), see how to write therapy progress notes.
Blank SIRP Note Template (Copy or Download)
The template below is free to copy, print, or adapt. No email address required. Download the fillable PDF.
SIRP PROGRESS NOTE
Client: ______________________ Date: ____________ Time: ____________
Clinician: ____________________ Duration: ________ Location: ________
Contact type (scheduled / walk-in / phone / mobile): _________________
S: SITUATION
Why this contact is happening and its context: presenting problem,
the client’s report, your observations, risk screening and result.
Reason for contact: _______________________________________________
Reported: _________________________________________________________
Observed: _________________________________________________________
Risk screen and result: ___________________________________________
I: INTERVENTION
What you did: assessment, de-escalation, skills, safety planning,
calls made, referrals, resources provided. Include times in crisis
contacts.
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
R: RESPONSE
How the client responded: their words, ratings, observable behavior,
what they accepted or refused.
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
P: PLAN
Next steps with owners and timeframes: follow-up contact, appointments,
client commitments, and the escalation condition.
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
Signature / credentials: ________________ Date signed: ____________
If you would rather not reconstruct all of this from memory after a crisis shift, Klarify drafts the whole note from the session. More on that below the comparison table.
SIRP Note Example
The example below describes a fictional, composite client. No real person, contact, or record appears here. It is set in a US community mental health center; swap the credentials and local resources for your own state or province, the structure is identical everywhere.
Setting: community mental health center, crisis walk-in, 45 minutes, Licensed Clinical Social Worker.
Situation: Client (41, established case-management client) walked in without an appointment at 2:15 p.m. following a phone argument with his brother about housing. Reports he has slept in his car the past two nights and “can’t go back to that apartment.” States he stopped sertraline about a week ago when the prescription ran out. Reports passive ideation (“sometimes I think it’d be easier not to wake up”); denies active suicidal ideation, method, intent, or plan. C-SSRS screen consistent with that report; no suicidal behavior. Speech pressured on arrival, no intoxication observed, affect anxious and congruent with content. Intervention: Conducted crisis assessment including C-SSRS screening (2:20 p.m.). Guided paced breathing for five minutes when client’s speech escalated while describing the housing conflict. Reviewed and updated the safety plan on file: added a second support contact and removed an outdated coping strategy at client’s request. Called pharmacy with client present; refill confirmed for pickup today. Called Fairview shelter with client present and confirmed a bed for tonight (3:05 p.m.). Confirmed client has the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (988lifeline.org) saved in his phone. Response: Client engaged actively in the safety-plan review and supplied both changes himself. Speech normalized by mid-contact. Self-rated distress 4/10 at close, down from 8/10 at arrival, and said having “the bed and the pills sorted” made the difference. Accepted the shelter placement, agreed to a follow-up call tomorrow, and left with a printed copy of the updated safety plan. Plan: Case manager to call client tomorrow before noon to confirm shelter stay and medication pickup. Client to pick up sertraline refill today and attend prescriber appointment Thursday, 10 a.m. Re-administer C-SSRS at next contact. If distress escalates before then, client will use the safety plan and call or text 988. Housing options to be revisited at the next scheduled case-management appointment.
SIRP vs BIRP vs SOAP: Which Format Fits?
SIRP and BIRP are siblings: the last three sections match letter for letter, and the whole difference is the opening. BIRP starts with the client’s observed behavior; SIRP starts wider, with the situation that produced the contact. SOAP is the outlier here: it splits report from observation and has no Response section at all.
Format | Sections | The distinguishing move | Reach for it when |
|---|---|---|---|
SIRP | Situation, Intervention, Response, Plan | Opens with why the contact happened and its full context | Crisis contacts and case management, where every note must stand alone |
Behavior, Intervention, Response, Plan | Opens with observed behavior in the session | Behavior-focused programs with a regular session rhythm | |
Subjective, Objective, Assessment, Plan | Splits the client’s report from your observations | Insurers and interdisciplinary teams that expect the split |
If your contacts are scheduled and the chart carries running context, BIRP or SOAP is usually the better fit. If what you keep losing is the link between an intervention and its outcome in a data-first note, DARP notes solve that instead.
Common SIRP Note Mistakes
Weak SIRP notes tend to fail in the same four ways. Scan your note against the left column before you sign it.
Mistake | What it looks like | Fix |
|---|---|---|
A headline Situation | “Client in crisis.” | Say who, where, why now, what was reported and observed, and the risk screen result. |
Interventions named by category | “Provided support and resources.” | Name the action, the tool, the call, and the time. |
Response written as your verdict | “Contact went well.” | Record the client’s words, ratings, behavior, and what they accepted or refused. |
A Plan without owners or clocks | “Follow up re: housing.” | Every step gets a person and a deadline, plus the escalation condition. |
What Do Regulators Require?
No US licensing board mandates the SIRP format. Where SIRP is required, the requirement comes from an agency’s or a public behavioral health system’s documentation manual, and county behavioral health systems are where the format most often appears by name. Retention is separate from format: HIPAA sets no retention period for clinical records (HHS, HIPAA FAQ 580), so state law and your board govern, and the APA suggests seven years after the last service for adults (APA, 2007).
For Canadian readers: the format works identically, but the governing privacy law is PHIPA in Ontario and PIPEDA federally, and record standards come from your college. CRPO, for example, requires records be kept at least ten years from the last interaction (CRPO Professional Practice Standards, Section 5). And a Plan section written in Canada should point to Canadian crisis resources: the national line is 9-8-8 (988.ca), not the US 988.
Klarify Writes SIRP Notes for You
Klarify, an AI assistant for therapists in the United States and Canada, drafts progress notes from the session itself: in-person session audio, virtual meeting audio, session dictation, handwritten notes, an uploaded transcript, or an uploaded audio file. It ships with 20+ built-in formats (SOAP, DAP, BIRP, and more), and SIRP is a one-time setup with custom templates, included on every plan: paste the blank template above in once, or just describe the structure, and Klarify writes SIRP notes from your sessions from then on. Audio upload depends on your plan, so check the current details on klarify.ca. Klarify is fully HIPAA, PHIPA, PIPEDA, Quebec Loi 25, and GDPR compliant, offers BAAs on request, stores all data in Canada, and deletes session audio from storage within 14 days, or earlier if you set it. Every therapist also gets a free Psychology Today-style public profile hosted on klarify.ca, with built-in marketing features to attract clients.
A crisis note written from memory at the end of a shift loses exactly what a reviewer needs most: the times, the sequence, and what the client actually said after each intervention. A scribe that heard the contact keeps the Intervention and Response sections honest. Klarify also generates session context, visual mindmaps of client themes, and reflection prompts after each session, so the chart gives you more back than the note.
Klarify writes SIRP notes for you, start free
Frequently Asked Questions
What does SIRP stand for in mental health notes?
SIRP stands for Situation, Intervention, Response, and Plan. Situation holds the context of the contact and the client’s presentation, Intervention holds what the clinician did, Response holds how the client reacted, and Plan holds the next steps. The format is most common in crisis services and case management.
What is the difference between SIRP and BIRP notes?
The last three sections are identical; the difference is the opening. BIRP opens with Behavior, the client’s observed presentation in the session. SIRP opens with Situation, which also covers how and why the contact happened at all. That wider opening is why crisis teams and case managers tend to prefer SIRP: their contacts are often unscheduled, and each note has to stand alone.
Who uses SIRP notes?
Mostly clinicians whose contacts are episodic: mobile crisis teams, crisis lines and walk-in services, case managers, and community or county behavioral health programs. Therapists in weekly outpatient practice use it less, because a regular session rhythm lets formats like SOAP or BIRP lean on the running chart for context.
Where does clinical assessment go in a SIRP note?
SIRP has no labeled Assessment section. Your clinical judgment shows up in three places: the risk screening result inside Situation, the choice of interventions you record in Intervention, and the reasoning behind the Plan. If your setting wants a standalone clinical impression, add an assessment line at the end of the Situation section and keep the language tentative.
How long should a SIRP note be?
Long enough that the next person on the file can act on it without calling you, and no longer. For most contacts that means a few sentences per section, well under a page. Crisis contacts often run longer in the Intervention section, because times and sequence are what an incident review reconstructs.
Do licensing boards require the SIRP format?
No US licensing board or Canadian college mandates SIRP or any other acronym. Where SIRP is required, the requirement comes from an agency’s or a public behavioral health system’s documentation manual. Retention rules still apply to the record itself: state law and licensing boards set them in the US, and colleges such as CRPO set them in Canada. Check your agency’s manual first, then your board or college.