Appropriate Language

Separated parenting makes reference to any two people who do not live together but have had a mutually consented relationship of any amount of time that has produced one child or more.

Shared parenting refers to a separated mother and father who have an approximately equal parenting role after their separation. They would both spend substantial, albeit not necessarily equal, periods of time with their child. Both may have a role in all aspects of the child’s life. On occasion the phrase ‘co-parenting’ is used as a synonym.

A resident parent: the parent who the child lives with predominantly, either through agreement or due to a residence order from a court.

A non-resident parent: a parent who, for most of the time, does not live with their child or children.

Lone parent and single parent both effectively refer to a resident separated parent. As they do not inform about the details of that parent’s (and the children’s) circumstances, which require further qualification, these terms are not usefully descriptive in the context of separation.

An excluded parent: Due to the resident parent having obstructed their involvement, an excluded parent spends little or no time with their child even though they are willing and able to care. Extended family members, such as an excluded grandfather, may also fall under this term. On the other hand, this would not usually describe the mother or father of children taken into care.

Contact is how non-resident parents and their children carry on with their relationship. It can take several forms:

- Direct contact signifies face-to-face contact in any context
- Staying contact includes an overnight stay with the child in any context
- Supervised contact, is a formal assessment tool used where there may be a risk to the child or others around them. It is imposed by a court or local authority, means that a third party is in a closely observing role and reports in detail to the court
- Supported contact, which is an assessment tool for situations where there is no significant risk to the child or those around them. Contact is supervised and observed but only attendance is reported Indirect contact indicates the use of phone calls, emails, taped messages, letters etc to continue relationships. This may be instead of or as well as direct contact

• Contact Centre. There is a national network of centres, sometimes voluntary and sometimes statutory funded where parents can meet their children in a safe and supervised setting.

Handover is when the child passes from one parent to the other. This is usually informal, but can also be arranged so that parents don’t have to meet, for example through a contact centre. 

Parental alienation is a type of emotional abuse, usually by the resident parent, in which one parent intentionally tries to destroy the child’s relationship with the other parent. They may continuously criticise the other parent, show anger if the child shows fondness or a wish to see the other parent, force the child to accept a new parental figure in their place, and claim that the other parent never loved the child and is only pretending as a form of revenge. Consequently, children may say that they no longer want to see the other parent or the other parent might stop seeing them so as to save the child stress.

A step-parent refers to a biological parent’s current or previous partner who takes part, to an extent, in parenting.

Step-siblings: Children or young people that have a brother or sister relationship with a child but are not biologically related to them.

Maintenance and child support are terms referring to regular payments by the non-resident parent to the resident parent to financially aid the upbringing of the child. This may or may not be ordered by a court or other agency, such as the Child Support Agency (CSA) or its successor CMEC.

Language to avoid:

Parent with care and absent parent, introduced by the CSA, are terms widely resented by non-resident and excluded parents. Many feel the phrases suggest that the resident parent is the only one who cares, and that not living with the children shows a desire for distance. While the term absent parent could apply to one who avoids their duty of care, it should be avoided by practitioners as it is so frequently used inaccurately. Labelling parents with such judgemental and implication-heavy phrases is likely to put them off engagement with services.

Custody: the discontinued term for residence.