For parents, the process of a child moving away from the family home can be difficult on many levels, both emotional, financial and in practical terms. A particular issue many parents face is how to pitch the level of their involvement in decisions that their child is making. With this change of legal status, many organisations and agencies and representatives of them will no longer automatically provide you with personal information or discuss your child’s affairs with you, including Unipol.

If your child is a tenant with us, they are responsible for their contract. This means, as per Unipol’s Data Protection Policy, we can only discuss their contract with your child. This can be really challenging for a parent, but unless they have given us explicit, written permission for us to talk to you, it would be unlawful for us to do so. If your child feels they need your support, all they need to do is write an email either to their Building or Property Manager, or the Tenancy Support Team stating that they are happy for you to speak on their behalf, and we will be able to do this.

If your child has not provided us with these permissions, we would not be able to discuss their contract with you – or even confirm that they are our tenant. This is to keep your child safe – for all we know, our tenant might be estranged from their family and not want them to know where they are! However, even without permissions, Unipol might be able to offer some advice to parents on how to handle certain situations, without them being specific to the tenant’s contract. If you are concerned or worried about your child, don’t hesitate to give us a call, just please remember that we have to work inside the law.

Sometimes, parents haven’t heard from their child in a couple of days and are worried about their wellbeing. If we have staff capacity, we might be able to check in on your child, but we would only be able to ask them to get in touch with you. It is very possible that we are not able to confirm how they are, unless they give us that permission. In most cases, they have been too busy having fun to get in touch, have broken their phone, or any number of innocent reasons why they haven’t been in touch.

If you are really concerned about their wellbeing, especially if they have been experiencing poor mental health, we would always recommend that you contact the Police as soon as possible. While we might be able to perform ‘Welfare Checks’ in our bigger developments like Mill Street or Sandhills, where there is often a member of staff on site, we cannot guarantee our availability to do this, particularly Out of Hours or in the dispersed student houses. If you are really concerned, please call the Police, to get a far more affective response.

If you are a parent and have any other questions about how Unipol can help you, contact Tenancy Support on tenancysupport@unipol.org.uk or use this form.