Professional terms
Draft, 10 September 2026 · version 2026-09-draft
These terms apply to anyone holding a professional account on ParentGlow, an independent co-parenting app built and operated in the United Kingdom as a sole trader. They sit alongside our Privacy notice. Where they conflict with anything else we publish, these terms apply to your professional use.
1. What a professional account is
A professional account lets a parent grant you read-only access to parts of their family record through the portal at portal.parentglow.co.uk. Nothing in it lets you write to the record, message a parent through ParentGlow, or see anything a parent has not granted. Professional accounts are free and will stay free.
2. Who may hold one
- Regulated professionals: solicitors (SRA), barristers (BSB), family mediators (FMC), social workers including Cafcass (Social Work England), and accredited contact-centre staff (NACCC). You give us your registration details and we check the public register before approving you.
- Identified professionals: McKenzie friends, charity and domestic-abuse caseworkers and similar roles without a register. You give us your real name, your organisation and a work email at that organisation, and we check those. Parents can see which kind of check was made.
- One account per person, in your own name, with a work email. Free webmail addresses are not accepted for regulated roles.
- We aim to decide applications within one working day (Monday to Friday) and tell you the outcome. We may refuse or later suspend an account without giving reasons where we reasonably believe the information given was false, the registration has lapsed, or these terms have been broken. Suspension ends your access to every family at once.
3. Your application must be true
You confirm that the identity, role, regulator and registration details you give are accurate and current, and that the one-sentence statement of who has instructed you is true. You will tell us within 14 days if any of them change, including suspension or removal from your register. Applying with false information is a breach that ends the account.
4. How access works
- Access to a family exists only while a parent's grant is active. A grant has a scope (calendar, expenses, documents, exports and, only if the parent chose it, messages) and an expiry date. Each parent creates their own grants. If both parents want you to see the record, each grants you access and you see the combined scope.
- The parent who created a grant can end it at any time, and only that parent can. If both parents granted you access, you keep it until each has ended their own grant. A parent may mark a grant as court-directed; that label is recorded and shown to you, and ending such a grant is recorded too, but the label does not stop the parent ending it.
- Every view and download is logged with your identity, what you looked at, and when, in a tamper-evident record that both parents can see and that appears in the family's evidence export. Do not use the portal if you are not prepared for a parent, or a court, to see when and what you looked at.
- The other parent is told that you have been given access, sees your verified identity and what you can see, and cannot block or end a grant they did not create.
5. Confidentiality and onward use
- Use what you see only for the matter of the client who granted access, in the course of your professional role.
- Where the material relates to family proceedings, Family Procedure Rule 12.75 governs what you may do with it: onward communication needs your client's consent and must serve the same purpose, and for information received as a party's adviser no further communication is permitted. You are responsible for compliance; we do not vet what you do with the record.
- Do not share your login, screen-share the portal to anyone not entitled to see the record, or give a colleague access other than through their own professional account and their own grant.
- Exports within your granted scope are for your client's matter. No bulk copying, scraping or automated retrieval, and no retention of the record beyond what your own professional and regulatory duties require.
- When a grant ends, stop using the portal for that family and delete working copies you do not need to keep under those duties. Your own case reference for that family stays in your account; the family's data does not.
6. Data protection
For the copies you take and the notes you make, you are a data controller in your own right. You need your own lawful basis and privacy information for your client and, where relevant, the other parent. We are the controller for the record and for the log of your access, as described in our Privacy notice. We hold your professional account details, including your registration number and your acceptance of these terms, for as long as the account is active and for six years afterwards (draft figure).
7. What the portal is not
The portal shows a parent's record as they kept it. It is not court-approved, not ParentGlow's assessment of anything, and the fact that a parent chose a scope does not mean the record is complete. Exports are formatted with Practice Direction 27A in mind; weight is for the court.
8. Sponsorship
An organisation may in future buy sponsored family seats under a separate agreement and allocate them to families it supports. Sponsorship pays for a family's subscription; it gives the organisation no access, and a family that loses sponsorship keeps its record and its free export.
9. Our liability and yours
We provide the portal with reasonable care and skill and do not promise uninterrupted availability. We are not liable for how you use the record, for professional decisions you take on it, or for loss caused by a parent's content. You are responsible for loss we suffer because you breached these terms, including regulatory action arising from your misuse of a record. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.
10. Ending
You may close your account at any time by emailing us. We may suspend or close it for breach, lapse of registration, or where a safety or legal risk requires it, and will tell you unless the law prevents it. Closure ends every grant to you. The access log stays with each family's record.
11. Law and changes
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. We may update them; a material change is notified to your account email and applies on your next sign-in after the effective date. The version you accepted is recorded against your account.
12. Contact
Questions about these terms or your professional account? Email a real person at hello@parentglow.co.uk.