Ask for visits with your child

If your child goes into care, such as in a foster home, make sure you or your lawyer asks for visits with your child as soon as possible. These are often called access visits.

Keep these things in mind about access visits with your child.

• If you can’t visit your child for some reason, ask if you can phone or use the Internet to contact your child.
• Ask the social worker to help you plan visits with your child. If this isn’t possible, as soon as you go to court, ask for visits with your child.
• Try to see your child as often as you can. Access visits are important to your child. Your visits also show the social worker and judge you care about your child. If there’s another court hearing, the judge may want to see that you made an effort to stay in touch with your child.
• If you’re on time for your visits, you have a better chance to get regular access. If you have to cancel a visit, it’s important to call beforehand.
• It helps to ask for visits at times and places that are easy for you and your child to get to.
• Take things for your children to do, such as books to read, pencil crayons and colouring books, or building blocks, so they’re active and engaged during access visits.
• Depending on your children’s age and needs, take healthy snacks for them in case they get hungry during access visits.
• The social worker may say you can’t see your child alone, and you have to have supervised visits. This means a social worker or access supervisor is at your visit with your child. You may not get to see your child as often, because social workers who supervise visits aren’t always available. If that happens, you could ask for a change to let you see your child alone. You can suggest other adults you know who could supervise your visits. If the social worker still doesn’t agree, you could ask to go to mediation. See also Collaborative planning and decision making.
• Keep your own records of when you contacted your child by in-person visits, phone calls, or the Internet, so you can tell the judge.