Common Ground for Professionals

Common Ground moves routine parenting coordination away from unstructured conversations and into purpose-built workflows. Instead of a running text thread that is easy to misread and hard to review later, each piece of parenting information has its own clear place.

Conventional co-parenting tools often assume that parents have a cooperative personal relationship and want to keep talking. Common Ground does not. It is built for parallel parenting: two households that share responsibility for their children, with the platform carrying the practical coordination so parents don’t have to rely on continuous informal communication.

• Clear boundaries
• Child-focused information
• Predictable communication
• Structured requests
• Reduced unnecessary interaction
• Transparent records
• Independent households

Separate homes. Shared responsibility. Common Ground.

The Common Ground Record brings activity from across the platform into one chronological timeline. A realistic day looks like this:

Common Ground records what occurred within the platform and when. It does not determine which parent is right or wrong.

No parenting scores. No cooperation scores. No AI-generated conclusions about either parent.

Generated reports can include:

• Unique report ID
• Generation date and time
• Reporting period
• Selected children
• Selected record categories
• Chronological records
• Relevant timestamps
• Edit and change history where applicable
• Attachment references

Where implemented, technical integrity information — such as a file hash — may also accompany the report.

A structured PDF makes relevant parenting records easier to organise and provide to a professional when required. Generating a PDF does not, by itself, make any material admissible evidence in a court, and Common Ground does not claim its exports are certified or court-approved.

Common Ground may assist families where communication needs to remain limited, structured or clearly documented, including some circumstances where court orders are in place.

However, Common Ground does not override a Protection Order, Parenting Order, bail condition or any other legal restriction. Parents must only use Common Ground to communicate where, and in the manner, legally permitted.

Common Ground is designed to minimise opportunities for surveillance or unnecessary contact between households. The platform deliberately avoids features that could be used to monitor, pressure or prolong engagement.

• No continuous location tracking
• No public child profiles
• Private parent spaces remain private
• Structured communication
• Controlled professional access
• Limited disclosure of personal information
• No social-media features
• No unnecessary engagement mechanics
• Clear account and access controls

Individuals experiencing immediate danger should use emergency and specialist services rather than relying on Common Ground. In New Zealand deployments, emergency and support service information is provided on our Safety Information page and can be configured for the services available in each region.

Where this feature is enabled, a parent or family can provide an authorised professional with controlled read-only access to selected information. The family decides which categories are shared and for how long — access is never granted silently or automatically.

• Access can be limited by category
• Access can be limited by date
• Access can expire automatically
• Access can be revoked at any time
• Professionals cannot alter parenting records
• Access events are logged

Professional accounts are separate from parent accounts. A professional signs in to a dedicated portal that lists the families that have explicitly granted them access — and only those families.

Professionals never automatically gain access to an entire family’s account. Every grant is created by the family, bounded by category and date, and enforced by strict permission controls.

Common Ground handles parenting and child information, which is often sensitive. These are the privacy principles the platform is built on, in plain language:

• Sensitive child information is stored per family and kept separate from other families
• Account security protects each parent’s sign-in and session
• Family-level data separation is enforced at the database level
• Professional permissions are explicit, category-based and time-limited
• Document security keeps shared files within the family
• Record retention keeps a stable, chronological history of shared activity
• Private parent spaces stay private; only shared parenting information is exchanged
• Account access can be reviewed and revoked
• Data exports let families obtain their own information

A library of guides is being prepared for professionals supporting separated families. Each will be downloadable here once its final document has been published.

Download links will appear on each card once the document is available.

Professionals can download a neutral information sheet to give to a family. The sheet explains what Common Ground is, what it does, that it is free for parents, the website address, and basic setup instructions — with a QR code for quick access.

Access to essential parenting coordination should not depend on whether a parent can afford another subscription. Common Ground is designed to provide its core parenting tools to parents without a subscription fee.

If you support separated families, your perspective matters. Tell us what works, what is missing, and any safety or privacy concerns you would like raised.

Common Ground intends to incorporate multidisciplinary input into how the platform is designed and improved, drawing on relevant areas such as:

We will only name advisors publicly once they have agreed to be associated with Common Ground. This page does not display any invented advisors or endorsements.

Common Ground does not replace, override or interpret any Protection Order or court order, is not approved by or endorsed by the New Zealand Family Court or the Ministry of Justice, and is not a replacement for legal advice.