Member

It is my experience, and that of other family judges, magistrates and Cafcass officers, that good centres are vital to the work done to normalise family arrangements wherever possible. The courts now understand when and how best to use the centres, recognising that they are not necessarily the solution to the most intractable cases, and also recognising, as the president has pointed out, that a contact centre is to be seen as a temporary arrangement, a stepping stone to be used for about three to six months, to include some exit plan to move contact away from the centre when the situation has settled down.