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Contact order
A contact order is made under s8 of the Children Act 1989 and requires the person with whom the child is living to allow the child to visit or stay with another or to allow to child to have other contact or communication with another. (This was formerly known as “Access”.) There may be more than one contact order made in respect of a child.
The contact may be overnight contact when a child stays with one parent overnight. This is sometimes also referred to as staying contact.
There can be indirect contact such as opportunities to telephone, write cards and letters and use Web Cam. This may be when it is not yet appropriate for direct face-to-face contact or it may be supplemental to direct contact or used when a child is in another country
There can be supervised contact and contact at a contact centre. This may arise when there are anxieties for the child, for any parental meeting surrounding contact and sometimes when anxieties about the parent who is having contact. It is invariably hoped that such contact will move in time to unsupervised and direct face-to-face contact.
Contact arrangements always depend on the best interests of the child and are affected by matters of geography, travel arrangements, work commitments and similar. There is no one contact arrangements for everyone. Nevertheless where geography, travel and work arrangements permit, it is quite usual for the so-called contact parent to collect a child from school on Friday afternoon and return on a Monday morning on alternative weekends, perhaps also see the child for a few hours one weeknight a week or perhaps overnight one night a week with collection from school and return to school the following morning, perhaps one telephone call a week and equally sharing school holidays. This of course depends on the child’s own commitments and making sure that arrangements for the child’s clothes and schoolbooks can work well.
In Association with
Sydney, Canberra and Parramatta