Managing separated parents or split families

This article provides guidance on managing separated parents or split families within the Arbor system. It covers access to child information, communication preferences, guardian consultations, and how to log guardians living in separate households. It also explains how to report on the number of households associated with a student.

In the article below, we take a look at the key things to bear in mind to make managing guardians who are split up in Arbor easier.

In Arbor, Guardians don't have a relationship to each other, just to the student. If each guardian's relationship to the student hasn't changed, you won't need to amend many details.

Access to their child's information

All primary guardians by default have access to log into the Parent Portal and Parent App, regardless of if they live with the child or not. You can see how to manage this here: Assigning family as Primary or Legal Guardians

If you don't want both guardians to have access, for example if a guardian has a court order, you can see how to prevent them from logging in here: Stopping specific guardians from accessing the Parent Portal

Whether guardians are Legal and/or Primary guardians also determine what communications they'll receive about a child. If you want to prevent a guardian from receiving emails and SMS regarding a child, you can see how to do this here: How do I stop communications being sent to this guardian?

What guardians can see and edit on the Parent Portal and Parent App

Both guardians can edit details for the children they are linked to (you can see how this will look for guardians here).

A guardian can't see the contact details of other guardians. This is the same for all guardians, not just those who are separated or where there is a court order. However, they can view the student's details if they live at the same address. You can see how this works here: Can parents see other guardian's contact details on the Parent Portal or Parent App?

Both guardians are able to respond to consents if it has not yet been consented to or declined. If one guardian responds to the consent, however, the other guardian is not able to change the response - they would need to contact your school to change it: Can parents update or change consents?

Guardians are able to see all invoices raised against the student's profile. This means that they will be able to see changes made to the balance of account types, and any payments made. Please note: We cannot stop one guardian from seeing the invoices or payments made by another guardian.

Guardian consultations and parent's evenings

Guardians consultations can be a little trickier to manage when guardians don't want to have a meeting together.

• When setting up your guardian consultations, make sure you allow guardians to book separate meetings by having this box ticked (you can see how this will look for guardians here).
• You can also manage the guardians in meetings using these instructions. Top Tip: Both Legal and Primary guardians can be down as attending a guardian consultation.

Can we check what guardians can see?

Yes you can! You can log in as a guardian to see what they can see and edit: Log in as a guardian to Parent Portal 

Log guardians as living in separated households

If the guardians now live in separate households but have dual custody, you'll need to log the address of the additional household. This is to ensure that letters and combined messages are sent to the right address.

The easiest way to do this is to add a new address for the student, and select that the moving guardian also lives there.

The student will then have two addresses- however, on the profile of the guardian who has moved, you'll need to add the end date of when they moved out by clicking the old address.

Scroll down in the slide over and click Correct Mistake or Delete Address.

Then click Delete. Now each guardian is logged as living at a separate address, but the student is logged as living at both addresses.

Can we report on the number of households?

There are a few different ways you can report on this:

• By using our Family reports
• By using the Student Contact Details page to see students with more than one address
• By creating a boolean User Defined Field (such as parents separate)