Jargon buster

Use our jargon buster to get to grips with any legal-speak you might come across while making arrangements for your children.

Cafcass

Cafcass stands for The Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. Cafcass officers help the court by mediating at court and writing reports about the children's needs for the court. They are sometimes called Child and Family Reporters and sometimes called Court Welfare officers. In some areas, it also provides support for families going through divorce or separation.

Contact

When and where a child can see an adult, or have contact in other ways such as phone calls, letters, presents. A contact order can be very specific, or leave arrangements flexible. The order tells the person with whom the child lives to make these arrangements.

Residence

Who a child is to live with. A residence order automatically has parental responsibility with it. Residence can be shared between adults.

Contact centre

A safe place, generally staffed by volunteers, where parents can meet their children and contact can take place. They are useful when there have been past difficulties over contact. They are generally used as a stepping-stone for re-establishing contact when parents have not seen their children for some time, or where there are issues (not necessarily founded in fact) about safety.

Parental responsibility

All the rights and duties that go with being a parent. All married parents have parental responsibility for their children. This continues even when you split up. If you are not married, the mother automatically has parental responsibility; the father can get it in a number of different ways

• By marrying the mother.
• By being registered as the child’s father on the birth certificate if the child’s birth was registered on or after 1 December 2003
• By being re-registered as the child’s father if no father’s name was included on the original birth certificate
• By making a parental responsibility agreement with the mother
• By getting a court order that gives him parental responsibility (this would be included in a residence order)

If you marry or enter into a civil partnership with someone who has children, you can share parental responsibility with them by

• Making a parental responsibility agreement with your husband/wife/partner plus the other parent if he or she also has parental responsibility
• Getting a court order

Custody

An old legal term that hasn't existed since 1989 but still gets used (wrongly) by the media. It used to refer to a combination of parental responsibility and residence. The Children Act separated out these two ideas so that both parents, and other important adults, could have parental responsibility, even if the children mainly lived with one person.

Access

This is another out-of-date legal term. The idea of contact has replaced it, but it isn’t the same thing. Access used to refer to an adults’ right to see a child; contact is now viewed as something to which the child is entitled.

Direct consultation

This is when mediators talk to children in the mediation process. With parents’ agreement, a child can have a private conversation with the mediator and the mediator will feed back to the parents what the child wants said to them. This can help parents make decisions, and can make the child feel heard and understood.

Legal Aid

Legal Aid is a government scheme to help people with low income and savings pay for legal help. If you are eligible you may get help with the cost of legal advice, assistance, mediation and representation. Unless the legal aid you receive is for help with mediation, you may have to pay it back at the end of the case.

Warning notice

Since 8th December 2008 a warning notice has been attached to every contact order made by the court. If somebody disobeys an order with a warning notice (for example, by unreasonably preventing contact) you can apply to the court for an ‘enforcement order’.

Enforcement order

An enforcement order allows the court to impose penalties on the person preventing contact. They court could order them to do community service, or pay compensation if they have caused the other person to lose money

October 2009