Venue details
Address (not for correspondence):
Blues Nursery, Cox’s Gardens,
Bishop's Stortford, Herts, CM23 3GX
Opening hours
Days & Times: Supported Contact Sessions - Saturday 09:00-11:00. Supervised Contact Sessions - Saturday 11:30-13:30
Centre charges
Services available here
Supported family time
Supervised family time
Handover
Accepts self referrals
Enhanced Accredited
Not For Profit
Description
We offer supported contact in a safe, friendly and neutral place where children of separated families can spend time with one or both parents and sometimes other family members. It is a child-centred environment that puts the needs of children first. We open on Saturday mornings between 10am and 12noon.
Local services
We are located in the centre of town. There are plenty of car parks nearby and we are a ten-minute walk from the railway station. There is no available parking at the centre itself. For handover families, there is parkland and a playground a ten-minute walk away from the Centre.
This centre is accredited to provide supervised 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 centre’s 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. If your family time happens in the community The service might use local community venues to deliver their service or in some cases, residential properties including family members’ homes, where this is safe and appropriate., then the assessor will check that this is going to be safe for you.
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: 15/09/2024
Summary:
Bishop’s Stortford Child Contact Centre has moved premises following their accreditation visit in 2024 and therefore was visited in April 2026 to ensure that the venue was appropriate for its purpose. The summary below has been altered accordingly to take account of the new venue.
Bishop’s Stortford Child Contact Centre has been providing supported family time for twenty-three years now and following a need in the area, the service is looking to fill the gaps of supervised services in the Hertford/Essex border. The centre has recently relocated to a pre-school and nursery within easy reach of Bishop Stortford’s town centre. Local bus routes serve the town centre with the railway station around ten-minutes’ walk away. The centre has onsite parking.
The centre was observed to be clean, nicely decorated and well lit, with various spaces for children and families to spend time together. A secure outdoor play area is also available.
The centre has a bright, and inviting website with a range of information included on this for the children and families that may use the centre. This information helps them to anticipate everything from making a referral to the appropriate steps to take if they are unhappy or feel unsafe.
Staff were friendly, hospitable and approachable and were easily identifiable with name badges. Bishop’s Stortford Child Contact Centre has worked well with the assessor throughout the accreditation process to produce their portfolio within the agreed time frame. Any recommended actions following the visit are now complete meaning the service meets the standards for enhanced (supervised) contact accreditation.
Photos from this centre
