A Contact centre is a place where a non-resident parent may have supervised (or supported) contact with his or her children. Its primary role is to support and promote contact between those parents, 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 facilitating contact as necessary.

Use of a contact centre may be ordered by a family court in cases where:

• contact is being resumed after a break and there are concerns raised by the residant parent.
• when there are allegations by either party of
• domestic violence or spousal abuse
• child abuse either; sexual abuse, emotional abuse or physical abuse
• neglect (The neglect of children is generally about three times more common than physical abuse and about six times more common than sexual abuse).
• where there is Parental alienation present or where one of the parties involved in the dispute has an implacable hostility toward another.
• where this has been deemed necessary by a custody evaluator or child welfare officer for welfare reasons, for evaluation purposes or else as a result of an abuse of power.

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 solicitors 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 solicitors. Other families are referred by the courts, CAFCASS officers, family mediators and social workers. 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.