To be sure, the coronavirus pandemic has presented a number of challenges for children and families. Children and parents are home more often, learning and working virtually. The pandemic has forced family courts, community stakeholders and parents to navigate an altered landscape. This is certainly true with respect to parental supervision. Increasingly, courts have allowed for and parents have availed themselves of “virtual visits.” Despite the challenges some families face in conducting such visits (due to computer access, internet access, etc.), for many families virtual visits have increased opportunities for positive parent-child interactions. This is especially so for non-residential parents and those who live at a distance for their children. Virtual visits do however, present unique challenges for parents whose visitation the court has ordered to be supervised.
A recent article in the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts’s quarterly journal (Family Court Review, Vol. 59 No. 1, January 2021) described how supervised visitation programs in one state rapidly and successfully transitioned from in-person supervised visits to online visits during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article outlines safety guidelines, offers tools and resources for staff supervising visits and explores the advantages and disadvantages of the virtual format for supervised and unsupervised visits.