Children’s Contact Service
The Children’s Contact Service provides safe and positive contact arrangements for children whose parents are separated.
It’s widely recognised that contact with both parents is important for a child’s wellbeing and future development, following a family break-up (except in a small number of circumstances).
For some separated parents anger, hostility and fear make it difficult to manage contact and shared care arrangements. In some situations contact between a child and their non-residential parent ceases altogether. This can lead to confusion, insecurity and trauma for a child in the longer term.
The Children’s Contact Service enables contact arrangements to occur with a minimum of stress both for children and parents. It can also help with establishing a relationship between children and parents when there has been a period of limited or no contact.
The Service provides:
- supervised contact visits to enable the child and visiting parent to enjoy quality time together
- facilitated changeover to enable the child to be transferred from one parent to the other at contact times without the parents meeting
- separate appointments for both parents
- privacy and confidentiality
- an established children’s centre with toys, games and equipment
- experienced and qualified staff.
The advantages of using a Child Contact Service are that parents do not have to deal directly with each other; a relaxed, safe and neutral environment is provided for both children and parents; and that contact can be re-established with the support of a neutral third party.
The following Relationships Australia states and territories offer Children’s Contact Services.
Please note that Children’s Contact Services are not offered by Relationships Australia in Victoria. For a full list of Children’s Contact Services visit Family Relationships Online.