Making the most of it : visiting parent perspectives on supervised parenting services

Supervised parenting services provide parents without custody of their children the opportunity to meet with their children. Often, families in crisis are referred to or utilize these centers following child safety concerns like domestic violence, parental substance use disorders, or child abuse and neglect. The goal of supervised parenting services is to provide a safe environment for visiting parents and children to meet. Research on this topic remains limited despite its importance to assisting families and children impacted by trauma. Understanding how visiting parents experience supervised visitations is essential to ongoing efforts to develop research supported practices and understand outcomes. This study examines perspectives of visiting parents (n = 11) participating in supervised visitations to better understand their experiences. Our findings showed that visiting parents’ experience is largely one of making the most of it. Parents demonstrated this attitude in response to three prominent aspects of visitation: a) the restricted environment, b) the rules of the game embedded in the visit structure, and c) the endgame, or goal or outcome of the arrangement. We discuss implications for future research and practice.