Courts will be given the power to order separated parents to attend “contact activities,” such as meetings with a counsellor or parenting classes, as part of a bill published today, writes Simeon Brody.
The Children and Adoption Bill will also grant courts the power to impose community-based “enforcement orders” or award financial compensation to either party if a contact order has been breached.
The government has withdrawn proposals included in an earlier draft bill to electronically tag parents who breach contact orders or impose curfews on them.
But it rejected a call from a parliamentary committee
scrutinising the draft bill to enshrine the welfare of the child as
the paramount consideration for the court where a contact order has
been breached.
In taking enforcement action, the court is only required to
“take into account the welfare of the child
concerned”.
The bill also gives the government power to impose restrictions on adoptions from other countries it there are concerns about adoption processes there.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldbills/010/2006010.htm
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