What is a Child Contact Centre?

Our Child Contact Centres are safe, friendly and neutral places where children of separated families can spend time with one or both parents and, sometimes, other family members. They are child-centred environments providing toys, games and facilities. We are affiliated with the National Association of Child Contact Centres and all our staff and volunteers are checked by the Criminal Records Bureau before starting work at the centres. NACCC pays for the CRB checks.

Aims of our Centres

The aims of our centres are to establish meaningful contact for children with their separated parents and to encourage the involved adults to plan for the family’s future contact elsewhere at a later date.

How many centres are there and who runs them?

NACCC currently supports about 350 Child Contact Centres throughout the Britain. Trained volunteers run the majority of these centres and it is estimated that 12,000 children use them every year.

Information for families

What happens during a contact visit?

The person having contact arrives at least 10 minutes before the visit is due to start and comes into the contact room. The person bringing the child or children for the visit goes into the waiting room and after staff take the children into the contact room they can leave the building providing we have a contact telephone number.

Who can use the Contact Centre?

The Contact Centre can be used by any member of a child’s family with the permission of the resident parent and the agreement of the co-ordinator.

Most often children will have contact with their mother or father but sometimes other family members are involved.

How often can contact take place?

Visits may take place weekly, fortnightly, monthly or less regularly. We try to ensure that the contact is suitable for the children and their visitors and that, as far as possible, it meets the ruling of any Contact Order.

We will also take into account how many families are already using the Contact Centre and the ages of the children. Sometimes we have to operate a waiting list and it may not be possible for families to begin using the centre for some weeks.

How long can a visit last?

Except in very special circumstances, contact visits in the centres cannot last for more than two hours.

Do families have to stay in the building all the time?

Both centres have gardens so families can go outside provided there is a member of staff or volunteer available to accompany them.

Sometimes a Contact Order or a Referral will state that children can leave the centre with their visiting parent or family member. In this situation the staff will still collect the children from the waiting room and return them afterwards but the children can go out for some or all of the time. In this situation a visit can last up to 4 hours.

Are there any rules?

We issue all parents with guidelines which we ask them to sign before contact begins. These include rules regarding the use of mobile phones, cameras or video equipment as well as our attitude towards alcohol, drugs etc. We remind them that we have a policy of strict confidentiality and that all users to the centres are treated with friendly, impartial courtesy.

Information for referrers

Referrals

Referrals can be made by a number of different professionals including the Family Courts, social workers from the Children Schools and Families (CSF) Department, Children and Family Court Advisory & Support Service (CAFCASS) officers, Family Mediation Service staff, health visitors, GPs, solicitors and parents themselves. Please ring or email the office to ask for a Referral Pack.

Charges

For solicitors and self-referrals there is an administration fee of £60.00. We have alternative charging arrangements with the other agencies. Please telephone for details.

Donations

As we are a voluntary organisation we welcome donations from individuals, churches, businesses and other organisations. A donation of £1.00 is requested from the users of our centres each time a visit takes place.

Supervision

Because we are primarily staffed by voluntary workers, we do not provide one-to-one supervision of families. However, we can facilitate supervised contact if staffed by an approved worker. This must always be arranged in consultation with the co-ordinator.

Observations

We are happy for contacts to be observed by approved workers eg social workers, CAFCASS officers etc. Again, this must be arranged in consultation with the co-ordinator.

Information for volunteers

Our volunteers play a valuable role in the day-to-day running of the Centres and we could not operate without them. We ask that volunteers work with us for a maximum of 3 hours on one Saturday each month.

All our volunteers are encouraged to take part in First Aid, Child Protection and Domestic Violence training as well as other topics which might be useful.