SCOTTISH CHILD CONTACT CENTRES: CHARACTERISTICS OF CENTRE USERS AND CENTRE STAFF
Footnotes
1. S1 (1) (c) and S2 (1) (c).
2. Scottish Network of Child Contact Centres information leaflet 15/3/leaflet/aims June 1998
3. The 1995 Act received the Royal Assent on 19 th July 1995. Implemented in 3 phases, it was fully operational on 1 April 1997.
4. Please see Annex 1 for a list of the 26 centres.
5 .e.g. as defined and discussed in Mitchell (2001).
6. Month 1: 19 centres out of 26 (73%); Month 2: 18/26 (69%); Month 3: 17/26 (65%)
7. The SNCCC guidelines (SNCCC 1999: 6) recommend that staff who are responsible for managing the referral process and who have responsibility for the service are paid. Please note that while this model is largely followed in Scotland, contact centres in England and Wales tend to be run by volunteers alone (see for example a description of how contact centres operate in England and Wales in Mitchell 2001: 613).
8. Month 1: Information supplied on 65 orders - 52 for contact (80%), 6 for residency (9%), 3 for interdict (5%). Month 2: information supplied on 57 orders - 44 for contact (77%), 6 for residency (11%), 3 for interdict (5%). Month 3 information supplied on 69 orders - 56 for contact (81%), 7 for residency (10%), 3 for interdict (4%).
9. Data was missing in the remaining case.
10. However please note that the numbers are small and length of time working at previous centres ranges from 4 - 72 months.
11. Day courses, longer courses and induction meetings were regarded as 'formal'. One respondent who received training in the form of shadowing regarded this as formal as it was a structured programme of work shadowing, where as for the rest of the respondents this was regarded as an informal process.
12. Please note that respondents were given the opportunity to identify any additional topics that their training covered if they were not listed in the questionnaire. Additional responses given by more than one respondent have been included in the tables above and indicated with an asterisk.
13. The role of an contact centre organiser / co-ordinator is to manage the contact centre on a day to day basis. This role may be paid or voluntary.
14. Please note that centre workers were questioned about whether or not they had provided chaperoning rather than supervised contact. 'Chaperoning' in this case was defined in the same way as supervised contact is defined above. This term was used as it was felt to be more readily understandable, and less likely to be confused with supervision of venue contact.
15. Although it should be noted that some organisations do provide counselling, mediation and contact centre services all over Scotland. The distinction here is that the contact centre staff do not provide counselling services apart from in the Western Isles; counselling is undertaken by different members of staff.
16. Also see Furniss 1998: 8 on handovers / separate entrances.
17. Please note that the SNCCC guidelines (SNCCC 1999: 9) state that all staff should be debriefed after a contact session.
18. Scottish Executive Justice Department Civil Judicial Statistics Scotland 1999, Edinburgh: The Stationery Office
19. Management Information System, Sheriff Courts
20. Please note that 5059 respondents completed the main questionnaire in the 2000 sweep of the SCS.
21. Scottish Executive (2000a) Domestic Abuse Recorded by the Police in Scotland 1 April - 31 December 1999, Statistical Bulletin, Criminal Justice Series Bulletin CrJ/2000/5, Edinburgh: Scottish Executive
22. As Halliday (1997: 53) notes: "The importance of the distinction between supported and supervised contact is frequently not appreciated by the courts who make orders for supervised contact at a centre when the centre makes it clear on their literature that they do not offer supervised contact and no one has obtained the consent of the centre to supervise it. If the wrong terminology is used there is a danger that a family who need 'supervised contact' are not getting it and that one or both of the parties come to the centre expecting more of the volunteers than is on offer." Please note, however that Halliday's article is not referring specifically to contact centres in Scotland, and that Phase 3 of this research explores the issue of conflicting expectations of contact centres in depth.