Breakup of marriage and parenting relationships is a common occurrence in our society. During and following this process, children with special developmental needs have particular vulnerabilities and may require extra consideration around their care.
Conflict and breakdown of communication quite often occur during relationship breakdown, and can impact on collaboration with professional care providers.
At the Child Development Network it is common that we see children whose parents are separated. The purpose of this policy is to explain how we manage communication in this situation.
Our practice management software identifies a 'default' parent (primary parent) for each child. Communication regarding that child, by default, is addressed to that primary parent.
This default applies to automatic communication such as reminder emails (sent to the email address of the primary parent) and reminder text messages (sent to the mobile phone number of the primary parent).
The default also applies to written communication. It is our policy to send a single copy of communication to the parent identified as the default parent (primary parent). This communication is routinely a copy of letters or medical reports being sent back to the referring General Practitioner.
In general, it is our expectation that separated parents work amicably in a framework of joint parental responsibility. Legally, this means it is the responsibility of parents to work out how they exchange information.
Due to practice management software and administrative limitations we do not have the capacity to make complex individualised arrangements.
The CDN Board
