St Mary the Virgin Scottish Episcopal Church, Hamilton

Rector: Revd Matthew Little

HAMILTON CHILD CONTACT CENTRE

Children need a safe, welcoming place to spend time with their non-resident parent.

The Hamilton Child Contact Centre plays an essential role in helping children affected by family breakdown
to maintain relationships with the parent they no longer live with, or with other family members.

The purpose of the Child Contact Centre is to offer a safe, friendly, neutral, child-centred environment
for children to meet their non-resident parent or family member.

The Child Contact Centre is designed to be a stepping stone to a more permanent arrangement for future contact.

What types of contact do we offer?

Supervised Contact

The Hamilton Child Contact Centre and Family Mediation South Lanarkshire are working together providing a supervised contact service to support families.

Supervised contact sessions incur charges that reflect the time required f or the preparation for the contact sessions, supervising the contact, and preparing a report following each session.

Further information on charges is available by contacting us directly.

Supported Contact

Supported contact is provided in two ways, in-centre contact or handover contact, and this is agreed at the referral stage.

1) Supported in-centre contact is facilitated by staff and volunteers who support children and their non-resident parent to spend time together in the homely environment of the centre.

2) Supported handover contact is when the non-resident parent takes the child out of the centre for an agreed period of time. The contact centre volunteers manage the handover of the child from one parent to the other during these sessions.
Should parents not want to meet with each other at the contact centre, then arrangements can be made to facilitate this.

A record of attendance is kept. An attendance report can be provided on request (fees associated).

The Contact Centre charge a referral fee.

Funding

We are supported by: Foundation Scotland,
The Robertson Trust, The Scottish Episcopal Church, fees and voluntary donations.

An OSCR-registered charity - St Mary's Family Support Project SC049697

Volunteering

The Centre is run by the Contact Centre Manager and volunteers from the community.

We are currently working towards a Volunteer Friendly Award. We welcome enquiries from interested individuals who would like to volunteer with us.

How do I refer?

Initial application should be made by your Solicitor by enquiry to our Contact Centre Manager. Unfortunately, we are unable to accept self referrals.