Part of Tend: practice management that stays on your device

Your Clinical Will, sorted.

Eight steps, in your professional body's wording. Everything stays on your device, and any copy in your own cloud is encrypted before it leaves.

Pay once No account Encrypted before it leaves Works offline

Set up in eight steps

Each one takes a minute or two. The circles turn green as your arrangement comes together.
1
Who you are, and your professional body
Your name, registrations and the body whose wording you follow.
2
Your executor
Name them, add their email, and have the conversation.
3
Initiator and supervisor
Who tells your executor, who holds the password, who steps in if needed.
4
Your records, and the key
Describe where the records are, how the key reaches your executor, and what finally happens to them.
5
What your clients are told
What your executor will say to your clients, written now in your own words, so nobody has to invent it on the worst day.
6
Send the letter, then the link
Email your signed instructions, then send the link by a different channel.
7
Keep a copy in your own cloud
One password, then Dropbox, Google Drive, or an encrypted file for any other service.
8
When you will check it
Set a review date. A clinical will nobody has read for five years is usually one that no longer works.
Also, when you are ready: insurance, membership, fees and tax (optional).

Built for the moment it's for

A clinical will may sit unneeded for twenty years. Everything here is designed to still work on the one day it's needed.
🖨Your executor needs no account and no app. They work from your signed clinical will, and open your encrypted records in a web page with the password your initiator holds.
∞Nothing expires. There is no trial, no renewal, and no subscription to lapse: nothing that stops working when it isn't being paid for.
📄The signed will stands on its own. It doesn't depend on this app, or on us, still being here.

Everything else

The supporting sections, one screen each.

Your details

Used to fill in your clinical will. Stored only on this device.

Your professional body

Choose yours. The checks, the wording of your pack and any declaration follow it.
Why it asks

Bodies ask for different things: how many people act, how long records are kept, and whether you make a declaration. Tend shapes the checks and the wording to match the one you choose.

Not listed? Choose "Another body, or none" and you get the standard arrangement, with a reminder to check your own body's wording.

Your clients (optional)

Names and contact details, so your executor can reach everyone. Kept on this device and in your encrypted backup only.
Where the names go, and keeping the list current

The printed will pack and the signed instructions carry a coded list only, never names. Names, emails and phone numbers go only into the encrypted backup, locked with your password.

Add and edit people here, or export your client list from your practice software or spreadsheet and import it again whenever things change. Re-importing adds new people and refreshes the rest; nothing is removed without you.

Want it to update itself? Tend Essentials keeps one caseload: every client you add, pause or end there lands in this list the moment it happens.

👤 Clinical Executor
In progress
Verbal is fine to start. When your executor replies to the step 6 email, that reply is the written confirmation: this switches itself then.
👥 Initiator and supervisor
In progress
Who does what

Your initiator is the person who will know first and tell your executor: usually whoever you live with. They hold the password and nothing else.

Your backup executor steps in only if your executor cannot. Your supervisor is a second route in, and someone your executor can consult.

Tell each person what they hold
One short message per role, written for you. Only the initiator card carries the password.
📁 Client Records & Access
In progress
Describe where your records are and how your executor gets in. Describe the place, not the link.
Why a description and not a link

Your executor holds instructions; the records stay where you keep them. The link to an encrypted file goes to your executor and backup in a separate message, and the password reaches them from your initiator.

For example: "encrypted file in my own Dropbox; link sent to you separately; my partner holds the password in a sealed envelope".

No secure place to point to yet?

Your instructions need a secure, reachable place to point to. If your notes and client details already live somewhere your executor could access, you are set.

If not, that is one of the most common things writing a clinical will reveals. Tend Essentials keeps session notes, client records and this clinical will together on your own device, backed up to storage you choose. One payment, no subscription.

Your choice prints as a ticked box in the will document. Check your professional body’s guidance and your indemnity insurer’s requirements before choosing.
What they should do, in order, from the first hours to the months after. Start from the template and change it to fit your practice. It prints in your will pack.
Choosing your professional body fills in its usual figure. Check it against your insurer’s requirements.

Send the letter, then the link

Email the signed letter first. Then send the link by a different route, to your executor and backup only.
Why two routes

The signed letter contains no client information, so your executor simply keeps a copy. The link (or the exact location) goes by a different route, to your executor and your backup, and never to your initiator, who holds the password.

A single lost or forwarded message then cannot open your records.

Opens an email in your own mail app. Nothing is sent through this app or through us.
Their reply is your written confirmation. When it arrives:
Or a signed agreement
Your executor signs on their own phone. The signed PDF comes back to you by email.
How the signing works

Tend sends a short agreement to act, as a link. Your executor opens it, reads it and draws a signature on their device. The PDF is created there and emailed back to you. Attach it here and Tend Clinical Will checks it against the text you sent.

Not yet signed.
Keep the route alive
Not yet recorded
Record when the link went, and check once a year that everyone still holds their piece.
Link sent separately: not yet recorded
Yearly route check, everyone still holds their piece: not yet recorded
If the link is lost

While you are well, it is one tap from repaired: re-generate the shared link from your own Dropbox, Google Drive, Proton Drive or whichever service holds it, and send it again.

💌 Client Communication Plan
In progress
Draft what your executor would say to your clients if you became unable to practise. They use the contact route you record for each person: a message, an email, a call or a letter.
💰 Financial & Admin
In progress
🔄 Annual Review
⚠ Not yet reviewed
Background and guidance
📖 What is a Clinical Will, and why does it matter?
Read first →

A Clinical Will is a set of instructions that ensures your clients are properly cared for if you are suddenly and unexpectedly unable to practise: through illness, injury, death, or any other incapacitating event. Without one, clients may simply stop hearing from you with no explanation, no referral, and no closure. That is a significant ethical and clinical harm.

Think of it as the clinical equivalent of a standard will: something you hope never to need, but which provides essential protection if the worst happens. Clients in active therapy are often in a vulnerable state. An abrupt, unexplained ending can be re-traumatising. A Clinical Will ensures that even in the worst circumstances, your clients receive a proper ending and a pathway forward.

What the professional bodies say
BACP: Under the Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions 2026 (point 4.5(e)), members are required to have a clinical will in place and to have appointed an executor, bound by confidentiality, who can communicate with clients if the member cannot. The framework becomes mandatory for all members from midday on 3 November 2026; until then the 2018 framework applies, which asks members to have appointed someone. Clause numbers checked September 2026: verify against the current framework before relying on them

UKCP: Requires members to have arrangements in place to protect clients should the practitioner become unable to continue. A Clinical Will is the standard way of meeting this requirement.

NCPS: Strongly recommends all registered practitioners have a Clinical Will. Some insurers are beginning to require evidence of one for professional indemnity cover.
What a Clinical Will covers
✓ Your signed instructions: a letter your executor keeps, containing no client information
✓ Where your client records are held, and how the key reaches your executor (usually from your initiator)
✓ Your three people: executor and backup, initiator, and one or more of your supervisors
✓ Suggested wording for contacting clients, and onward referral pathways
✓ Your professional body, insurer and referrer details
✓ What should happen to your records at the end, decided now, with fees noted for whoever handles your personal affairs
✓ When you last reviewed it and when it's next due

Completing a Clinical Will is not a morbid exercise: it is an act of professional care for the people you work with. Many therapists report that the process of completing one actually deepens their sense of professional identity and commitment to their clients' wellbeing.

👤 Choosing and approaching a clinical executor
How to approach it

Your clinical executor is the person who will carry out your Clinical Will if it becomes necessary. They are not responsible for providing therapy to your clients: they are responsible for ensuring clients are informed, supported through the transition, and referred on appropriately. The role typically involves a few hours of work at most, but requires someone who can act with sensitivity and clinical understanding.

Who makes a good clinical executor?
✓ Your clinical supervisor: they already know your work, understand the therapeutic relationship, and have clinical standing
✓ A trusted clinical colleague: someone in practice who understands the ethical obligations involved
✓ A fellow therapist from your training cohort or peer group: peer executors are common, and often mutual
✓ A senior practitioner in your professional network

✗ A family member or partner, unless they are also a practising clinician
✗ Someone who would be too emotionally affected to act with clarity
✗ Someone with no understanding of therapeutic relationships or confidentiality
Having the conversation: it's easier than you think

Many therapists put off this conversation because it requires acknowledging their own vulnerability and mortality. This is understandable, and worth noticing as clinical material in its own right.

In practice, most therapists when asked feel honoured to be trusted with this responsibility. The conversation is usually much easier than anticipated. A good place to start is in supervision, or with a trusted peer.

Sample approach: what to say

"I'm putting together a Clinical Will and I'd like to ask you something. I'm looking for a clinical executor: someone who would contact my clients and support them to find onward referrals if I were suddenly unable to practise. It's not a lot of work, but it needs to be someone with clinical understanding. Would you be willing to take on that role? I'd be very happy to be your executor in return."

Offering to be their executor in return is both generous and practically useful: it normalises the conversation and means you both have plans in place.

Confirming in writing

Written confirmation doesn't need to be formal or legal. An email exchange is entirely sufficient. The important thing is that both parties have a clear record that the agreement exists.

Sample confirmation email to send your executor

"Thank you for agreeing to act as my clinical executor. I attach my signed clinical will: it contains no client information, so please simply keep a copy. The link to my records will come in a separate message, and the key will reach you from my initiator if it is ever needed. Please let me know if anything is unclear or if your contact details change. I will check the arrangement annually. [Your name]"

Use the Send to executor button in this app to generate this email automatically, then follow the step two prompt to send the link by a separate channel.

If you're struggling to find an executor
If you are newly qualified or practising in isolation and don't yet have a clinical colleague you feel comfortable asking:

✓ Raise it in supervision: your supervisor may be willing, or can suggest someone
✓ Raise it in a peer supervision group or CPD network
✓ Contact your professional body: BACP, UKCP and NCPS all have member networks
✓ Some therapist organisations offer executor-matching services for their members

In the short term, having a partial Clinical Will, with records organised and instructions written, is significantly better than nothing, even if the executor confirmation is still pending.
🔄 What the process involves
Step by step
Creating yours
The Set up in eight steps card at the top of this page walks you through the whole arrangement: who you are and your professional body, your executor, your initiator and supervisor, where your records are and the key, what your clients are told, sending the letter and then the link by separate channels, a copy in your own cloud, and when you will check it. Each circle turns green as it is done, and this app keeps everything only on your device.
If your will is ever activated: what happens
Immediate steps (within 24-48 hours)
Your executor contacts each active client individually using your instructions, and any suggested wording you included. They acknowledge the situation, confirm that sessions cannot continue, and offer onward referral options.

Client support
Your executor is not providing therapy: they are providing a bridge. They may offer a single supportive conversation to help each client process the news, but their role is to facilitate ending and referral, not to continue the therapeutic work.

Records and administration
Client records are handled per your instructions: retained for the appropriate period, then securely destroyed. Outstanding fees, and anything paid in advance, are noted for whoever handles your personal affairs. Your professional body and insurer are notified as appropriate.

Your executor's protection
Acting as a clinical executor is covered by your executor's own professional indemnity insurance, provided they act within the scope of what is set out in your will. This is why clarity in your instructions matters: it protects both your clients and your executor.
If you are acting as someone else's executor
✓ Contact their clients using the client communication in their will
✓ Provide the referral options they have specified
✓ Do not access clinical notes beyond what is necessary
✓ Notify their professional body membership body
✓ Contact their insurer using the details in their will
✓ Handle financial matters per their instructions
✓ Keep brief records of actions you have taken

You are not providing therapy. You are providing a safe, dignified ending. That is a significant act of care, both for the clients and for your colleague.
⚠️
Professional guidance. For BACP members a clinical will with an appointed executor becomes a requirement of the 2026 Ethical Framework (point 4.5(e), mandatory from 3 November 2026). UKCP and NCPS publish their own continuity guidance. Review annually and after any major life change.

Print & backup

Keep a paper copy with your practice documents, and send the backup file to the place named in your will: your own Google Drive, Dropbox, Proton Drive or files.

When you're ready for more

Your clinical will points to where your records are held: the full Tend app is where they can live. The biggest difference is that nothing needs updating by hand again: your caseload, this coded checklist and the encrypted backup, to Dropbox or Google Drive, all update themselves in real time as you work. Around that sit session notes, scheduling, invoicing and income, supervision log, CPD tracking and SAR export, with the same promise: everything stays on your device, one payment, no subscription. Anything you've entered here carries straight over.

Explore Tend

A copy in your own cloud (optional, recommended)

If this device is lost, your arrangement should not be. The copy is encrypted here before it leaves.
Who can read the copy

Only someone with the password you choose below: not us, and not the storage company. Your initiator holds the password. Your executor gets the link, never the password, and your initiator hands it over if the day comes.

1. One password for every copy
2. Where the copy lives
Connect one or both. Each copy refreshes itself whenever something here changes.
Dropbox
Google Drive
Neither? Any other service
Proton Drive, OneDrive, iCloud, a USB stick: send an encrypted backup file there and save it. It uses the same password. It does not refresh itself, so send a fresh one after you change anything; the step circle reminds you.

Closing down (for your executor)

When the practice has been wound down and the will says records should be destroyed, this erases everything this app holds on this device, and can delete the encrypted copy in Dropbox too. It cannot be undone.

Privacy

This app stores everything in your browser's local storage, on this device only. We do not receive, store, or process any of your data: there is no server, no account, and no analytics. The only network connections are to load the app itself and, if you choose, to save an encrypted copy to your own Dropbox or Google Drive.

If you add client names and contact details, they are held on this device and in your encrypted backup. The backup is locked on your device with your password before it goes to your own Dropbox, Google Drive or other storage, so the storage company cannot read it. Your signed instructions and the printed will pack carry initials only.

Because data lives on this device, please keep a backup file somewhere safe, and be aware that clearing your browser data will remove it.

The full Tend app adds PIN lock protection alongside its clinical features.
Tend Clinical Will · by Confident Therapist Hub
Licensed to you, for your own practice. Save licence file