Dr. Aoife Campbell:

To address something touched on earlier, there is a great deal of talk about counselling, and about counselling beforehand. It is important, though, if not perhaps in the context of legislation, for it to be part of the conversation that counselling must be an ongoing process, especially in cases of surrogacy and where there is a third-party donor. As children get older and as discussions become more complicated, sometimes the parents, or the surrogates, if they are still involved, will need the support of a counsellor in determining how best to approach and discuss such topics with the child. It should be noted that counselling is not just a tick-box exercise to be done before starting this process, but may be ongoing, hopefully, for the life of the child. That is important.

I have not checked in a while, but I think the state of Victoria has, or at least had, a good support system of disclosure in respect of parents. As the process of disclosure develops as the child gets older, understands more and asks more involved questions, it is important for it to be possible to continuously go back to a support service. It might be a case where people might have coped until a child reached the age of ten, and then they find they do not know how to explain the next level. It is important to consider something like that service being available, especially in the long term, and funding in that context as well.