Role of the Contact Centre

Contact Centre’s are a very useful commodity, when dealing with Family proceedings which include children, by offering a safe location where the non-resident parent can have contact with his/her children in a child focused environment.

There are three key types of contact centre; Support contact which facilitate handover and pick up, allowing child to be dropped off by main carer and picked up by non-resident parents, grandparents, or extended family; with the adults not even having to meet each other. This is particularly useful if parents are unable to communicate effectively, this makes a nice happy handover without any bad feeling which the children are likely to pick up on. These can be voluntary or charged.

Supported contact also provides a place for contact to take place, if there are disagreements if the child should be taken out into the community, whilst court proceedings are ongoing; these contacts are not observed by staff as there are not believed to be any safeguarding concerns.

The other type of Contact in a Centre is Supervised contact, this is still a child focused environment, however rules are put in place to ensure there are no safeguarding threats, and 1 or 2 members of staff make notes on all interaction and complete a report which is either given to the court or Social Workers or both.

Most Contact Centres are members of the National Association of Child Contact Centres (NACCC). Most are self-referred, but can also be referred by mediation service, Social Worker, Solicitor, CAFCAS. All risks will be assessed before contact can take place.

A well-established Child Contact Centre in Feltham,

West London is https://c4f.co.uk/

Further details about contact centres can be found on the NACCC website by clicking https://naccc.org.uk/