The provider you choose determines the safety of your child's visits and the quality of the record your case is built on. Here is how to vet one properly.
In much of the United States, supervised visitation is an unregulated profession. There is often no license to check, no state registry to search, and nothing legally preventing an untrained individual from advertising supervision services tomorrow. That puts the burden of vetting on families and their attorneys — at precisely the moment they have the least bandwidth for it. This checklist is designed to make the vetting fast and rigorous.
Because most states do not license visitation supervisors, independent accreditation is the closest thing the profession has to a trust mark. The standard to look for is accreditation by the Supervised Visitation Institute (SVI), the independent standards organization for the supervised visitation profession.
SVI accreditation is meaningful because it is not self-declared. A provider must demonstrate compliance with published standards across seven domains of professional practice — including credentialed supervisors, comprehensive background screening, structured training, professional insurance, and documented policies and procedures. A provider who has earned it has been measured against external criteria by an organization with no stake in their business.
The first question to ask any prospective provider: "Are you accredited by the Supervised Visitation Institute?" If the answer is no — or the provider has not heard of professional accreditation at all — weigh everything else you hear accordingly.
TruVisit is SVI-accredited across all 28 of our markets; our About page describes what that commitment involves. But this checklist applies to any provider you consider, including us.
Covered above. Ask directly, and verify rather than taking a website badge at face value.
Every person who will be near your child should have passed a criminal background check and child-protective registry screening. Ask what the screening covers and whether it is repeated periodically. "We know our people" is not a screening program.
Ask what supervisors are trained in. The right answer includes child safety, neutral observation, de-escalation, professional boundaries, and objective documentation. A few hours of shadowing is not training.
The report is the product. Ask to see a redacted sample report, and look for: timestamps, factual behavioral description, a consistent structure, and the absence of opinion. Ask how quickly reports are delivered (within a few days is professional standard) and who receives them. Our article on what monitors document shows what good looks like.
The provider should have no prior relationship with either parent and no role that compromises neutrality — and should be able to explain how they keep parents separated at visits and exchanges. Be wary of any provider who, in the first conversation, seems to be taking your side. The value of supervision to a court rests entirely on the supervisor's neutrality.
Ask how arrivals and departures are staggered, how protective orders are handled, what causes a visit to be paused or ended, and what happens after an incident. A professional provider answers these instantly, because the procedures are written down.
Professional liability insurance, written fee agreements, and clear policies are markers of an organization built to last your case's duration. Their absence is a warning.
A superb provider with a six-week waitlist or weekday-only hours cannot serve an order requiring weekly weekend visits. Confirm capacity, evening and weekend availability, and how quickly a case can be activated before you commit.
Price belongs on the list, but last, and always as value rather than sticker. The cheapest supervision in town is expensive if its reports carry no weight with your judge. Compare total costs across providers honestly — our cost-factors guide shows how — and then weigh them against the credentials above.
Some orders permit a relative or friend to supervise. It is cheaper and sometimes appropriate — but go in clear-eyed: informal supervisors rarely produce documentation a court will credit, they are vulnerable to accusations of bias from the other side, and supervision duty can strain the family relationships you will rely on for years. Many families who start informal switch to professional supervision precisely because the disputes about what happened during visits never stopped. Professional documentation ends them.
If you are represented, loop your attorney into provider selection before you commit. Family law attorneys work with supervision providers constantly and know which ones produce documentation their local judges actually credit — and which ones generate problems. Practical points to coordinate:
If you are unrepresented, the checklist above matters even more, because no one else is vetting on your behalf. Accreditation does some of that work for you: it means an external body has already verified the fundamentals.
A provider who answers all six cleanly is a provider you can work with. TruVisit's answers are on our service pages, our FAQ, and available anytime at (972) 362-9203 — most TruVisit cases are active within 48 to 72 hours of intake, in 28 markets nationwide.