The REAL Price of Supervised VISITS
From the initial father who called me in late 2014 to 20+ fathers later in 2018, there is one significant commonality,
Dad’s and Supervised contact.
One day you are part of a family, you kiss your child good night every night, you are a significant part of their every day. You continue to live in the family home and whilst their is acrimony, you hang on, as you know once the door shuts the fight starts.
Dad’s I have seen the same mistake over and over and over, you accept supervised contact without ascertaining as to the risk you allegedly pose to your child, without a clear plan of intervention to eliminate this risk, there maintaining a healthy parent child relationship. There is no outcome or timescales, or reviews of the supervised contact. There is no scale of child’s need in terms of contact with the non custodial parent, even though their is an abundance of information and and research available. It appears to be a whipping stick, a stalling mechanism, measured finances (if you have the money to pay for the supervised contact) not at all in the best interest of a child. Its never authentic, quality time that a parent would share with a child.
The parent is always under scrutiny and knows that all will be reported to the courts. Yet the desperation to see your child is immense, emotional and consuming. It is a cycle of desperation, loss, living for the next few hours of contact, back to waiting until you can see them again. Dads try to Whatsapp or video call their children, however children don’t want to be tied to a device to have contact with a parent, they want their parents visible felt and physically present to them.
One of my cases told me that he had spent a a huge amount of money with a mandated social worker – for 39 hours contact . The contact was for all three of his sons, however he often only had two children attend due to the long periods of absence. This father has bought with everything he has available in admits of having two serious operations, loosing his employment, close family members being diagnosed with cancer, countless court cases, police involvement, huge legal fees whilst riding the emotional turbulence without a parachute.
So the lesson in this little article is as follows – find out what is the real price of supervision, ask the questions:
1. as to why you are being supervised as a non custodial parent?
2. Ask what interventions or programmes you can attend to minimize the risk that you allegedly present?
3. What is the time scale of the supervised visits?
4. How will these been assessed and does the hours of supervised visits benefit the development needs of the children?
Lee Wade
