West Lancs Child Contact Centre

West Lancs Child Contact Centre aims to support the emotional, psychological and social development of children and young people by providing them with safe and beneficial contact to parents, siblings and other family members from whom they are separated (temporarily or permanently) due to care or contested contact proceedings and by restricting and preventing unsafe and damaging contact.

West Lancs Child Contact Centre seeks to value and promote the rich cultural and ethnic diversity of its clients and to advocate for and actively promote the provision of professionally managed child contact services at a national and regional level as being fundamental to protecting, supporting and ‘hearing’ children during and following contested family law proceedings.

Our aim is to provide as much safe, beneficial contact to as many children as possible, through a range of child focussed contact services in a client-centred environment where separated children and adults can safely explore, understand, and develop their identities and relationships, and to intervene to prevent unsafe contact from ever starting.

West Lancs Child Contact Centre has been accepting referrals from CAFCASS for over 2 years now. In this time we have accepted referrals from solicitors as far away as Blackpool, Courts (both magistrates and County Courts), local authority and Social Services, whose criteria is looking for a safe environment for family members to spend time with children.

We take a holistic approach to our work looking at the whole picture instead of looking at the issues, which are initially presented to us. With this in mind we take a multi agency approach and enjoy working with a range of organisations to fulfil our aim of being a successful support agency.

West Lancs Child Contact Centre achieves this by providing, uniquely, professional assessment, intervention and planning, child and adult counselling and family mediation, to support children and adults through processes of change, separation, and loss during and following public and private Children Act 1989 court proceedings. In doing so West Lancs Child Contact Centre informs and challenges referring agencies assessments and contact planning in order to protect vulnerable people and to develop and disseminate good practice in child contact.