Contact: Making good decisions for children in public law

This tool sets out a five-step approach to planning contact informed by the available research.

Step One: What is the purpose of contact?

1. Build or maintain relationships. 
2. Assure a child they are loved and remembered. 
3. Ease the pain of separation and loss. 
4. Give permission to settle in a new family. 
5. Support reparation and recovery after abuse. 
6. Provide a reality check. 
7. Reassure that birth relatives are alive and well. 
8. Help children to understand their history and identity (particularly for black and ethnic minority children). 
9. Support life story work and allow children to ask questions about why they do not live with birth parents.
    

If direct contact is not safe, how else can you meet these needs?

Step Two: What are the risks and strengths?

Contact plans should be informed, rather than determined by research. The arrangements for any particular child should be based on their specific needs and circumstances. Research by Elsbeth Neil and others has identified a number of factors in the child, birth relatives and carers that are associated with either beneficial or detrimental contact. This can be used to evaluate the risks and strengths associated with contact for a particular child.

Step Three: Provisional plan for contact

Consider all types of contact, including: 

1. Supervised professionally or by carers/extended family. 
2. Supported/actively facilitated to improve relationships/allow child to ask questions. 
3. Community-based/activity-based. 
4. Telephone/letter/Skype/social media. 

Frequency of contact should allow the child to regain equilibrium between visits and enjoy family life.

Step Four: Contact support plan

This could include: 

1. Supervision, facilitation, mediation. 
2. Emotional and practical support before and after visits. 
3. Involving children and families in drawing up written agreements. 
4. Establishing role clarity (Who is Mummy? Who tells the child off?) 
5. Financial help with travel/trips. Help to take part in special family events (for example weddings). 
6. Access to quality venues. 
7. Links to support groups. 
8. Clarity about decision-making process. 
9. Life story work. 

Don’t assume that kinship carers can manage contact without support.

Step Five: Review

This should consider everybody’s point of view, paying particular attention to children’s response before and after visits and their demeanour during contact as well as their verbally expressed wishes.

1. Does the pattern of contact need to change? 
2. Does the support to contact need to change? 
3. What is the purpose of contact?

Case Study

Kayla suffered severe neglect in her mother’s care. Her father has had no involvement in her life. Contact was three times a week during care proceedings and was difficult throughout. The local authority sought a full care order to allow Kayla to remain with her current carers long-term, with a flexible plan for future contact (and no contact order).

What is the purpose of contact?

To reassure Kayla that she has not been forgotten and her mother is OK, to provide a reality check and help Kayla begin to understand her history.

Strengths: For Kayla

• Developing attachment and secure placement with current carers

Risks: For Kayla

• Older child with troubled/traumatic relationship with mother (highly avoidant attachment). 
• Challenging behaviour, difficulties around eating. 
• Kayla expresses a wish to have contact but is distressed and fearful before and after visits, finding it hard to go to school and wetting the bed. 
• During contact she is loud and agitated, often laughing without apparent amusement. 
• Kayla has memories of being cold, hungry and frightened in her mother’s care. 
• Kayla appears overwhelmed by contact, becoming manic and disruptive.

Strengths: Foster carers

• Not afraid or at risk from mother. 
• Recognise benefits of contact. 
• Involved in contact planning. 
• Trained and prepared to support contact. 
• Positive attitude to birth family, acknowledge reasons for placement. 
• Resolved states of mind in relation to own loss/abuse. 
• Constructive, collaborative approach. 
• Sensitivity, empathy, reflective capacity. 
• Communicative openness.

Risks: Foster Carers 

• Anxious that too much contact could unsettle Kayla.

Strengths: Mother

• Respects foster carers, some acceptance of placement. 
• Able to relinquish parenting role to some extent. 
• Good relationship with contact supervisor. 
• Reliable, punctual. 
• Does not use contact to undermine/threaten or cause conflict with carers.

Risks: Mother

• Sometimes undermines placement by criticising carers. 
• Finds it difficult to hear about Kayla enjoying life with her family. 
• Serious maltreatment by neglect in the past. 
• Struggles to focus on Kayla’s needs during contact, winds her up and then gets cross, treats Kayla like an adult - confiding distressing information. 
• Does not recognise that Kayla suffered harm. 
• Struggles to care for herself – is often unkempt, runs out of money, is at risk of eviction.

Provisional contact plan

• Contact six times a year in each of the school holidays, activity-based for two hours supported by foster carers and contact supervisor. 
• Visits to take place at the local park and café when it is sunny, at the aquarium in bad weather.

Support plan

• Our aim is to improve the quality of contact. 
• Social worker will meet with everyone involved before and after each contact. 
• Contact supervisor will actively facilitate visits, helping mother to remember not to worry Kayla or get her over-excited. 
• Written agreement to be drawn up with Kayla, her carers and her mother. 
• Social worker will provide a camera so Kayla can take photos for her life story book during contact. 
• Social services to fund aquarium tickets, snacks in café and mother’s bus fare.

Review

We will review this plan after two visits to see if the quality of contact has improved and the negative effects on Kayla have reduced.

Contact: Making good decisions for children in public law

This tool, based on work by Elsbeth Neil, is designed to support contact planning for children placed in adoption, long-term foster care and kinship care. The accompanying Research in Practice Frontline Briefing Contact: Making good decisions for children in public law provides further information about the research that underpins this tool.

References

1. Adams P (2012) Planning for Contact in Permanent Placements. London: BAAF. 
    
2. Ashley C (2011) Managing Contact. London: Family Rights Group.  
    
3. Children's Rights Director for England (2009) Keeping in Touch. Manchester: Ofsted.  
    
4. Family Futures (2009) Siblings - together or apart? London: Family Futures. 
    
5. Macaskill C (2002) Safe Contact? Children in permanent placement and contact with their birth relatives. 
    
6. Dorset: Russell House Publishing. Neil E , Beek M and Ward E (2014) Contact after adoption: a longitudinal study of adopted young people and their adoptive parents and birth relatives. London: BAAF. Available online: www.uea.ac.uk/ contact-after-adoption/home
    
7. Neil E and Howe D (2004) Contact in Adoption and Permanent Foster Care. London: BAAF.
    
8. Sinclair I (2005) Fostering Now: messages from research. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. 
    
9. Sturge C and Glaser D (2000) 'Contact After Domestic Violence: the experts' report for the court'. Family Law Review. 
    
10. The Care Inquiry (2013) Making not Breaking: building relationships for our most vulnerable children. London: The Care Inquiry.