Notification of Other Parent

If you are separated, divorced from, or never married to the child’s other parent, it is our policy to notify the other parent that we are treating your child, unless there are extenuating circumstances. If you provide false or inaccurate information to Spencer Psychology that prevents notification, please note that this could be a potential issue for you if your child’s other parent pursues a complaint.

Disagreement between Parents for Services

One risk of child therapy involves disagreement among parents and/or disagreement between parents and the therapist regarding the child’s treatment. We can hopefully resolve such disagreements, or we can agree to disagree, so long as this enables your child’s therapeutic progress. Ultimately, parents decide whether therapy will continue.

• If either parent decides that therapy should end, we will honor that decision, unless there are extenuating circumstances.
• If one parent declines treatment during the enrollment process (and has legal access to the child), we will not proceed to schedule your child.
• If services are already in progress, we will ask that you allow the therapist the option of having a closing session or two with your child to appropriately end the treatment relationship.
• A more common issue is that parents may disagree with each other about goals for their child, or disagree with each other about how treatment will proceed. This issue does happen occasionally, primarily with divorced parents. This can create barriers to the child’s progress in therapy. Family meetings can be scheduled to try to create mutually agreed upon goals, but if the parental conflict cannot be managed around the therapy goals, it is unlikely the therapy will be successful and the child may need to be referred out.
• The therapist cannot be in the role of a couples counselor or mediator and be effective with the child. The therapist will make efforts to keep both parents updated on progress, but it is not possible to do this exactly the same for both parents.

I understand the statements above regarding how Spencer Psychology will notify parents about a child's therapy .

Child Name: Enter client/child name

Electronic Signature of Client/Parent/Guardian: Enter your full name

Date: