Children’s Contact Service
The Children’s Contact Service (CCS) helps separated families with children organise supervised visits and changeovers.
The desired outcome of this service is for children to have contact with their parents in a safe and supportive environment free of conflict.
Parents may be ordered by the Family Court of Australia to attend a CCS for facilitated changeover of supervised visits with their children. At other times, separated families (including extended family members) may choose to use the service to stay connected with children. The CCS ensures that the child/ren’s best interests are kept at the centre of the contact process.
Throughout 2021-22, the CCS received increased funding which has enabled the program to widen its delivery scope and resources. This allowed us to expand the service delivery days, increase staffing and employ a Separated Family Support Practitioner to help families to progress through the service to self-managed arrangements.
In October last year each of our sites conducted “open days” as an opportunity for Family Law Practitioners through the Family Law Pathways Network to visit and learn about services, and to think about how their clients could benefit from the CCS services. The events were very successful with 46 people attending across our three sites.
Statewide, our CCS was able to provide 825 Tasmanians access to changeover or supervised visit services with over 3,500 sessions throughout the year.
Statewide, our CCS was able to provide 825 Tasmanians access to changeover or supervised visit services with over 3,500 sessions throughout the year. Countless other families either enquired about the service, commenced steps to engage in the service, or are going through intake to access the service.
This year we were also able to develop some short animations that explained the service in a child friendly way – some pictures of the animations are below:
The CCS team are dedicated to enabling children have safe contact with parents and provide supervision to families in a non-judgemental and child focused environment. We have a large team of dedicated staff that ensure the service can be delivered across peak times like weekends and holiday periods.
There are many stories that demonstrate the positive impact the CCS can have, like the one below:
A staff member noticed an existing CCS child client observing another child who had her visit at the centre and was crying when her dad left. The child approached the other child to comfort her and said “It gets easier and just because you don’t see your Dad as much, he still loves you the same. They always keep coming back even though it feels like they won’t“.
The child stopped crying and smiled.
Co-Parenting Communication Essentials – Relationship Australia Tasmania (relationships.org.au)