Mothers who flout contact orders face new penalties

Divorced and separated mothers who flout child contact orders could be ordered to do community service or sent to parenting classes under sweeping new powers for courts recommended in a report to the lord chancellor yesterday.

The system for enforcing orders for contact is "seriously deficient" and "needs swift and radical change", says the children act sub-committee of the lord chancellor's advisory committee on family law.

Under current law, there are few sanctions if the parent living with the child - which is in most cases the mother - is determined to bar access by the other parent despite a court order. The courts have powers to fine or jail a parent, but judges are reluctant to be so heavy handed.

Pressure groups representing fathers are growing increasingly militant and regularly picket the homes of family judges at the weekends to press their point.

The sub-committee calls for legislation giving the courts wider options. It wants a two-stage process, based on a system recently introduced in Australia. In the first, "non-punitive" stage, parents would be given information on children's needs and how to make contact work, or sent on a parenting programme designed to tackle disputes. Only if that failed would the court move to a "punitive" stage.

The court would have new powers to refer parents for parenting classes, counselling or mediation; to refer them to a psychiatrist or psychologist; to refer a violent parent to an anger management programme; to place a parent on probation with a condition of treatment or attendance at a class or programme; or to impose a community service order.

The courts would be able to order a parent whose actions caused the other financial loss, such as the cost of a lost holiday, to pay compensation.

Only if all else failed would the courts fine or jail parents.

The sub-committee calls for resources to be put into resolving disputes by negotiation, mediation and conciliation, without the need to come to court. "The litigation process is adversarial and counter-productive... It tends to focus on the arguments of the parents, not the needs of the child," the report says.

Extra funds should go to the family courts advisory and support service, to provide advice, mediation and access to therapeutic and counselling services.

Controversially, the sub-committee suggests that the government should consider linking the payment of child support to the right to have regular contact with the child.

Jim Parton, of the pressure group Families Need Fathers, said: "Broadly, we welcome the tone of the report. There is at least a recognition that where contact is thwarted, it needs to be dealt with and some imaginative thinking about non-adversarial approaches."