Supervised contact in the Family Court
The Family Court has the power to, and frequently does, order parents to have supervised contact with children when they are not otherwise spending time with them.
The Balancing Act
A driving factor behind this approach is the constant balancing act the Court is required to perform between protecting children from harm and ensuring they have a meaningful relationship with their parents. Supervised contact can seem like a good option for allowing a child to interact with a parent who might otherwise be a source of harm, because the interaction is in a controlled environment and can be stopped if any risks to the child materialise. And this makes a lot of sense, on a short term basis.
There are however, a myriad of issues with the use of supervised contact in Family Court proceedings.
Problem 1: it doesn’t address the reasons it was needed in the first place
Supervised contact can be ordered to get children back in touch with parents they have not seen for some time in a whole range of situations. It is often seen as the natural first step when a parent has been out of contact with a child for a period, no matter the reason. The problem with this, is that supervised contact does nothing to actually address the underlying issue between the parent and child. It’s one solution to many problems.
The graphic above is just a small portion of the reasons why children may not be spending time with a parent, and only touches the children’s reasons, which they may not be able to articulate clearly. It doesn’t begin to cover situations where a parent may be trying to act protectively despite a child’s wish for contact, where a parent has drug, alcohol, violence or neglect concerns.
Problem 2: It isn’t supervised by child professionals in a regulated environment
Currently in Australia, supervision services are largely unregulated. There are no enforceable national protocols for their services, and no special training for their staff. This is not to be critical of many services who are trying to fill a much needed gap, but simply to say that there is no guarantee of consistent service, or consistent training and understanding of issues such as family violence.
There is a national association which provided guidelines and is lobbying for regulation, and you can see those non-binding guidelines at the Australian Children’s Contact Services Association. There is also an inquiry underway about implementing a national accreditation program.
The system is also not adequately funded, leading to long wait times for parents who cannot afford private supervision.
Problem 3: it doesn’t represent real world parenting
The most common complaint about this system is that reports on supervised contact don’t tell us anything about the “real-world” parenting of the supervised parent. This is most frequently a problem when the concerns raised about the parent relate to behaviour that is not happening all the time – for example, where the issue is abuse of children. It is very rare that an abusive parent would be like that in front of a third party, or that a parent accused of alcohol abuse would turn up for 2 hours of contact drunk. The children may enjoy the visit and be happy to spend time with the parent in that environment, without it telling us much at all about how safe that child will be with the parent in the “real world”. Which leads us to problem 4…
Problem 4: It’s seen as a gateway to unsupervised contact
There is a tendency by courts to see a successful period of supervised contact, where the children have appeared to enjoy their time, where there has been no inappropriate behaviour by the parents, as meaning that the parent and child are ready to “progress” to unsupervised time. It becomes a ‘natural progression’ from supervised to unsupervised, and often from there to overnight contact.
There are practical reasons for the Courts looking for ways to move parents from supervised to unsupervised time.
If there is a view that a relationship between the parent and child is meaningful then the Court is once again caught by the balancing act – how do we protect the relationship and protect the child? Supervised contact is not considered a good long term option because
- resources to provide it are scarce,
- it’s considered a fairly artificial environment that wont sustain a relationship longer term
- final orders for supervised contact only are rare, as they often require ongoing oversight and there is no guarantee that particular agencies will continue to have funding or operate long term.
Problem Solving
So what do we do about these issues? Firstly, We need to recognise these problems. Parents and lawyers who are trying to make decisions about how to run a parenting case need to specifically consider the purpose of supervised contact in the context of their case -what is the objective in doing the supervision? Will it do anything to address concerns? Does it need to be coupled with other things (counselling, drug testing etc)? What will happen if the report is positive? What will happen if the report is negative? Should you be looking at other options like no contact, or short periods unsupervised?
We should not assume supervised contact is the natural place to start when a family relationship has broken down. Strategic discussions should be happening right at the start of a dispute, rather than just assuming there is one roadmap for every case.
