Monday, October 27, 2008

Contact Preferences: current policy


According to Service Ontario, A notice of contact preference lets your birth parent know how you want to be contacted. You must file a separate notice of contact preference for each birth parent. In a notice of contact preference, you can say that you’d like to be contacted by e-mail or by telephone, by letter or through a third party.
The only contact information that your birth parent will see is the information you provide on the statement page of the application, so this is where you can make it easier to get in contact with you through providing an address or phone number, and also any information you don’t want the other party to have should not be included in the notice.
Unlike no contact notices, notices of contact preference are not binding and there are no repercussions to not adhering to the preferences. This means that the other party is not legally required to contact you the way you requested. To see examples of the forms and guides available to those wanting to file a notice of contact preference, please see the Service Ontario website at: http://www.gov.on.ca/ont/portal/!ut/p/.cmd/cs/.ce/7_0_A/.s/7_0_252/_s.7_0_A/7_0_252/_l/en?docid=111872.
While the ability to request that contact be made through a third party with a certain amount of notice does allow the mediation and preparation piece to take place, the fact that the preferences are not binding is problematic and does not create an effective solution to the removal of mediation from the reunion process.

L.

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