Orders made by the court usually provide instructions that are for parents to follow. Centres can be bound by court orders and most of the time they will do their best to work within them.
However sometimes, this will not be possible. For example, on occasions it can happen that the court will order a centre to provide a service that they do not offer, or to provide a service that they cannot offer within the timescales allocated.
Common instructions from the court to centres might include dates for reports or a specific number of sessions to be offered. Typically, centres do follow these instructions and this works well. However, there might be other occasions where to do so is not deemed to be in the child’s best interests or might even place them at risk. This could be because of changes in information or sometimes as a result of new information that the court didn’t know when they made the order. When this happens the centre would be expected to act in the best interests of the child and if this means not following a court order then steps would usually be taken to make the court aware of this.
Different centres and courts will have different processes for dealing with this. Often the courts and centres will have an arrangement when appropriate alternatives will be offered. On other occasions your legal representatives might have a mechanism to overcome this. It is also possible that you might need to return to court to get orders changed so that they can be followed.
