1 Feb 2010, 09:00

The Family Court ordered that a woman's visits with her children should be supervised through an approved supervised access service.

After some months the woman asked the supervised access service to provide a report of her visits with her children that included the staff's observations about her interaction with her children.

The supervised access service refused the woman's request, saying that it was the centre's policy to provide a report about supervised access visits only if it was requested by the lawyer appointed by the Family Court to represent the children.

The centre's policy was to remain neutral. It did not want to be seen to be providing evidence directly to one parent.

The woman complained to our Office that her personal information was being wrongly withheld from her.

Principle 6

Principle 6 of the Privacy Act requires that an agency that holds personal information must provide access to an individual's personal information unless one of the exceptions in sections 27-29 of the Act applies.

In this case, information about the woman's interactions with her children was personal information about her held by the supervised access service.

This complaint was resolved when the lawyer for the child agreed to request the report from the supervised access service and provide a copy of the report to the woman.

However, both parties asked for our view about the supervised access service's policy and guidance about how to deal with future requests for reports on supervised access.

We advised that when the Family Court is overseeing access to children, it would often not be appropriate for our Office to become involved in issues surrounding access to personal information. There may often be good reasons in difficult family cases that a party should not be given information. The Family Court may have applied restrictions on parents' access to information which would override the Privacy Act.

We advised that where the Family Court has ordered and is overseeing supervised access through a supervised access service we would be likely to refer to section 71(g), which provides that the Commissioner may use her discretion not to investigate a complaint where there is 'in all the circumstances an adequate remedy or right of appeal... that it would be reasonable for the individual alleged to be aggrieved to exercise'. In this type of case, the appropriate remedy or right of appeal would be to seek the information through the Family Court and/or the lawyer for child.

However, we advised that if the Family Court had not been overseeing the woman's supervised access, we may have taken a different approach to her request for reports on her visits with her children. When the Court ceases to be involved in oversight of access to children or in cases where the supervised access is organised as a private matter between parents or caregivers, section 71(g) would not apply and a request for personal information under the Act should be granted unless one of the withholding grounds under sections 27-29 applies.

September 2010

Family Court, access to personal information - Privacy Act 1993; principle 6, section 71(g)