Family Custody

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Practice

Parent Involvement Guidelines in RainTree

  • One parent will serve as the primary contact for the child in RainTree. This is established at the time of referral and recorded in the RainTree Contact tab. Regardless of custody arrangements, RainTree can accommodate only one signing parent for documentation purposes.
  • The treatment planning and intake process is centered on the child, and therefore only one set of documents is permitted.
  • Providers should seek guidance from their manager if parents make requests that fall outside our usual processes.
  • At referral, parents are informed of these practices when appropriate.
  • Providers will more often encounter requests from separated or divorced parents during treatment. In these cases, providers should explain:
    • Only one parent’s signature is required for forms; generally, this will be the parent who initiated services.
    • We work with the parent who has the child during the visit. In cases of 50/50 custody, providers may alternate visits between parents (e.g., one visit with Parent 1, the next with Parent 2).
    • If a parent is not custodial, the provider will share intervention progress and strategies with them, and if time allows, schedule an in-person intervention visit during the parent-child visitation.
    • Parents are responsible for coordinating which of them will attend each visit. If they wish to attend jointly, this can be arranged; otherwise, separate visits can be scheduled for each household.

Documentation and Meetings

  • Evaluation: Only one evaluation document is prepared. However, if parents report different behaviors in different environments, providers may opt to conduct the evaluation over two days as a clinical decision.
  • IFSP (Individualized Family Service Plan): Only one IFSP is generated per child, but both parents are invited to participate in IFSP meetings and provide input toward each goal.
  • Parents will be provided with all relevant documents.

 

Procedure

The child’s primary contact will be set up in two places:

  1. Patient Demographics – contact numbers can include both parents, however only 1 email can be listed.
  2. Contact within the Chart. Providers, please note that if parent/guardians are struggling to connect to the signature pages, go to the RT patient demographics and check if the password is blank; the parent/guardian cannot reset this to access the signature pages. Assure that this is filled with a ‘dummy’ password and tell the parent to reset this upon accessing the patient signature forms portal.
  3. If a parent makes an unusual request, provider(s) will follow up with a manager.

    We do:
    • Provide services to biological parents, per the law, however, there are circumstances that may prevent full release of information to parents, as well as a full array of services, such as when the parent is not custodial, is not present, is incarcerated and/or OCS has custody. ROI requests will go through OCS workers.
    • Protect parents contact information upon request (from the other parent)
    • Protect foster parent contact information. However, OCS has indicated that foster parent names can be included in the record as they have agreed to be the physical custodian for the child.

      We do not:
    • Communicate or act as go between for parents. Parents are expected to work out visits and schedules per their custody agreements.
    • Unless instructed by OCS, or for safety reasons, we do not withhold information or records about the child from parents.