Enforcing contact orders:problem-solving or punishment

Abstract

There are long-standing concerns that the family courts fail to enforce their own court orders in child contact cases following parental separation. This report presents the findings from the first major research study of enforcement applications in England and the first to explore the use of the new punitive sanctions available to the courts introduced by the Children and Adoption Act 2006. The research attempted to explain the puzzle of why the family courts so infrequently used punitive sanctions in these cases.