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Contact centre is also a common Euphemism for Call Centre A Contact centre is a place where a non-resident parent may have supervised (or supported) contact with his or her children. Its priamary role is to support and promote contact between those Parent s, grandparents, guardians and children that do not have a Residence Order (non-resident parent). Its secondary role is to reduce the animosities of parties involved in legal disputes regarding the upbringing of their shared children by faciliting contact as necessary. Use of a contact centre may be ordered by a Family Court in cases where:
UNITED KINGDOM The centres are local projects, run by charities such as Family Mediation and the WRVS , or local churches and are not statutory institutions. However it is common for Solicitor s to direct their clients to contact centres as well as for courts to order parents to allow the other parent contact with their children at such centres. The contact centres are largely staffed by trained Volunteers - many from church groups - and are regarded as a neutral ground. Such centres are intended to be transitional, though where mutual or unilateral hostilities between the parents persist, it can require further court appearances in order to 'move away' from the contact centre. The first contact centres in Scotland opened in 1988 . There are more than 280 contact centres throughout England , Wales and Northern Ireland . It is estimated that 12,000 children use them every year. All staff and volunteers are checked by the Criminal Records Bureau prior to starting work at the centre. Most families are referred to contact centres by Solicitor s. Other families are referred by the courts, CAFCASS officers, family Mediators and Social Worker s. The majority of contact centres do not charge for the use of their services but are dependent upon donations or grants from local authorities or CAFCASS to continue their work. Some are supported by local community initiatives. The Fathers' Rights movement in the UK argue that shortages of places at contact centres are used as reasons to prevent them seeing their children and that frequently the only reason given for using a contact centre in those cases is that the mother demands it. Rather than devoting funds to extend the network of contact centres, some fathers' rights campaigners argue that contact centres should only be used for a specific small minority of cases, such as where there are health reasons why the father cannot care for his children unaided. Supporters of the Shared Parenting argument claim that if the father has residence of the children prior to the initiation of court proceedings it can be such the case that the mother is the parent who ends up seeing their children in a contact centre, for the only reason being that father demanded it. AUSTRALIA Children's Contact Services (CCS) are funded under the Government Of Australia 's "Family Relationship Services Program" (FRSP). The services help with handover of children and also provide supervised contact. At 1 February 2004 there were 35 FRSP-funded Children's Contact Services and a number of non-Australian Government funded services. SEE ALSO
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