Supervised Contact and Supported Contact

In certain cases parents or the court might decide that there should be a period of supervised contact. It might be appropriate for there to be supervised contact for a number of reason such as the amount of time that has passed since a child has seen the parent requesting contact, or that there are safety concerns about unsupervised contact.

Contact can be supervised either by an agreed third party, such as a friend or relative which both parents feel happy with or can take place at a contact centre. Contact centres are usually run by volunteers. The volunteers do not heavily supervise contact and won’t for example listen to every conversation between a parent and a child. A contact centre can provide a safe child friend venue for contact to take place.

Some contact centres agree to just deal with contact handover so that one parent drops the child/children off and then the other parent collects and returns the child/children to the centre.

If social services are involved they sometime supervise contact. If social services supervise contact this contact is usually more heavily supervised than contact at a contact centre.

Vicky Shufflebottom
vs@watkinssolicitors.co.uk