4. Visit your child
Question & Answer
How do I get access to see my child after CAS takes them?If you're allowed to visit your child, it's important to try to maintain a good relationship with them. For example, you may want to:
- hug your child
- talk about things they like
- play with them
You shouldn't talk badly about (CAS), or discuss things that upset your child.
Visits might be unsupervised or supervised. A supervised visit is when a CAS worker or other adult is in the room watching you and your child. Usually, these visits happen at a CAS office.
The CAS worker can write notes about what happens at the visit. This information can be used in court to decide whether or not to give your child back to you.
If you have more than one child in care, CAS may schedule your visits with all of the children at the same time or they may schedule separate visits. It depends on your family's situation. If your children are placed together in the same foster home, you're more likely to visit them together. If you have a baby and a child in school, CAS may let you have more visits with the baby. If the children don't get along or if you find it difficult to manage more than one child at a time, CAS may plan separate visits.
You should try to go to every visit. Make sure you're on time. If you can't go to a visit, tell CAS in advance why you can't be there. If you miss visits or are late, it may look like you don't care or aren't reliable.
If you don't agree with the type of visits you have, ask the court to order a different type of visits. Or you could ask the court to give you more visits or longer visits.
CAS or the court may be willing to change your visits if things change. For example, if you can show that you can feed and change your young child during visits, CAS might agree to longer visits.
