Venue details
Address (not for correspondence):
16 Chapel Street,
Belper, Derbyshire, DE56 1AR
Opening hours
Days & Times: Alternate Saturdays (irrespective of date) 10am to 12.30pm. Office Thursdays 10am - 12pm
Services available here
Supported contact
Handover
Accepts self referrals
Accredited
To make a referral,
contact:
Address: c/o Belper Community Cottage, 16 Chapel Street, Belper, Derbyshire, DE56 1AR
Telephone: 01773 880364
Description
The Belper Child Contact Centre is based in the Amber Valley District in Derbyshire. We provide a meeting place for separated parents to meet with their children. We serve both the local and wider community. The Centre is a safe, friendly and impartial place where children can meet with their parent (or other family members) with whom they no longer live with following their parents’ relationship breakdown. Although there needs to be at least one parent with your child at all times while at the Contact Centre, volunteers can carry out handovers so you do not have to meet your ex-partner if you do not wish to.
This centre is accredited to provide supported contact
Accreditation is a way of checking that your contact centre is safe and meets our standards.
How is a centre checked?
An assessorSomeone working on our behalf who has experience and an interest in child contact services and must assess if a service meets our standards. looks round the rooms, toys, equipment, and any outside play areas to make sure that they are safe and good for you to use. They talk with the people at the centre to make sure that they are trained and helped to do their job as well as possible. They then check the informationThe assessor checks through the centre’s accreditation portfolio which includes policies, procedures, risk assessments, reports (if the service offers supervised contact) and information for families. on what happens at the centre and how it keeps you safe.
When the assessor is happy that a centre meets our standards then they are awarded their accreditation and you can find them on this website. Accreditation happens every three years with extra checks if needed.
Accreditation Summary
Date: 26/11/2021
Summary:
Belper Child Contact Centre provides supported contact for families in the local community (and beyond) situated in the central business district of the town with excellent local amenities and public transport links. The premises utilised by the centre are contained within a beautiful residential looking building run by Belper Community Cottage which has a contact room and an office downstairs. There is also a kitchen with a lean-to conservatory that also acts as a contact room. There are then a number of small rooms upstairs which are also used. Toilets are available on both floors. The centre also has garden spaces for children and their family members to use. The building was noted to be clean and tidy, as well as being maintained to a high standard. This service has an appropriate range of toys and resources for people using the centre.
The majority of referrals coming to the service are self-referrals and at the time of the report the service was currently supporting only one family and had a small group of volunteers. The size and layout of the building would make it inappropriate for the service to be supporting any quantities of families at any one time. It is reported that they tend to work with about three families at any one time, which seems reasonable bearing in mind the amount of space available to the service.
The co-ordinator has been in post since February 2019 and manages the various volunteer teams. The co-ordinator manages the referral process and works with the families to make sure that the centre has the information needed to make safe and appropriate decisions prior to having them at the centre. The co-ordinator also works with new families through a pre-visit process. This allows them the opportunity to ask any questions and for the coordinator to confirm any information from the referral process. Furthermore, the pre-visit process provides an opportunity for the families to understand the rules and sign up to the relevant agreements. The current co-ordinator used to use the service and is passionate about meeting the needs of the children and families using the centre. They believe that these experiences help them to be in a unique position whereby they are able to understand the needs of the families using the centre.
The centre is well established and experienced. They have demonstrated that they understand the needs of the families using the centre and plan their service in a way that demonstrates their commitment to the work that they do. The service meets the accreditation standard for supported contact.
Photos from this centre
