We were delighted to welcome our friend Kyoko Takada, Associate Professor of Law at Hiroshima University, Japan, to the NACCC office in Nottingham yesterday.
Kyoko has been instrumental in setting up an equivalent organisation to NACCC in Japan, to ensure children can safely meet and spend quality family time with parents and family members they no longer live with following divorce or separation.
Having first visited NACCC back in September 2016, Kyoko was eager to learn first-hand about the standards and accreditation processes we have developed and the support we deliver to our accredited members.
Kyoko has since visited the NACCC office several times over the years where we have arranged for her to meet a host of key stakeholders across the UK, including professionals from Cafcass, The Ministry of Justice, The College of Mediators, alongside organising trips to visit some of our accredited child contact centres.
As part of the working collaboration, NACCC CEO, Elizabeth Coe, was invited to be a keynote speaker at a symposium at the Waseda University in Tokyo in 2019, where she was honoured to share a wealth of information, experience and best practice with over 100 attending guests.
Elizabeth said
NACCC has been working with children and families for over 30 years and in that time we’ve gained a wealth of experience on how to best support families through separation. To ensure children from across the world benefit from our learning, it is important that we share our experiences. We have established good working relationships with colleagues across the globe including America, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Japan. We are pleased to continue working with Kyoko and to see the incredible progress being made at the child contact centres in Japan.
Working with Professor Shuhei Ninomiya, along with lawyers, sociologists, psychologists and child contact centres, Kyoko established the Association of Child Contact Services Japan [AccsJapan] in November 2019. The organisation established national standards for child contact centres and in 2020 started providing accreditation services.
Prior to establishing AccsJapan, around 70 child contact centres existed in Japan. However, these centres were unregulated with no reliable information available about each centre’s provision. Furthermore, many regions did not have a local child contact centre and due to low funding, some centres were unable to provide a safe environment for families to meet.
With the head office based in Kyoto and operations continuing from Hiroshima, AccsJapan standards have now been set across all the member sites with 7 centres reaching accreditation status and around 30 centres working towards accreditation; ensuring many more children can meet with non-resident family members in a safe and welcoming environment.
As part of this year’s visit, Kyoko is focusing on the UK’s emphasis on the voice of the child and we’ve planned another full itinerary to enhance her learning. This includes meetings with professionals from Cafcass Cymru (Wales), the Domestic Abuse Commissioners office, Women’s Aid, The National Youth Advocacy Service [NYAS], and The Family Solutions Group, alongside a trip to Sheffield to meet our friends and colleagues at Buzz.
It was lovely to see Kyoko again and to hear of the incredible progress being made. We look forward to our continued collaboration, helping to widen and improve the support available for separated families across Japan.
