How does the court process work if the one parent is against contact?

[HamSandwiches22]

I've tried googling but I'm getting a bit overwhelmed with the amount of information to wade through. I was wondering if anyone could explain it simply. If the RP wants to prevent unsupervised contact for safety concerns, how would it work through the courts? I assume eventually that unless there was hard evidence, contact would eventually go ahead though. I was just wondering what the actual process would be like compared to court when there is no safety concerns :)

What safety concerns? Cafcass will investigate any allegations made by the RP and if they are found to be true and serious enough to prevent unsupervised contact then supervised contact will be recommended. It is usual that where supervised contact is recommended that there would be a plan to work towards unsupervised contact eventually.

I was the RP who had CP concerns severe enough to stop contact.
My Ex was not man enough to go to court, but after DC had a break period I established supervised contact which last for 6 months, the unsupervised in a public place etc. once Ex had proved himself and DC were comfortable this lead to fully unsupervised contact.
If he had taken me to court CAFCASS would have been involved they would have interviewed me, DC and the two independent witnesses who DC discussed the CP issue with. My solicitor discussed with me the case and all the steps. No that it should stop you, but he warned me that if it went all the way through the courts I would have needed a barrister and I would have been looking at about 20K costs. Frankly I would have bankrupted myself to protect DC.

I was the RP who had CP concerns severe enough to stop contact.
My Ex was not man enough to go to court, but after DC had a break period I established supervised contact which last for 6 months, the unsupervised in a public place etc. once Ex had proved himself and DC were comfortable this lead to fully unsupervised contact.
If he had taken me to court CAFCASS would have been involved they would have interviewed me, DC and the two independent witnesses who DC discussed the CP issue with. My solicitor discussed with me the case and all the steps. No that it should stop you, but he warned me that if it went all the way through the courts I would have needed a barrister and I would have been looking at about 20K costs. Frankly I would have bankrupted myself to protect DC.

I think it's important to say that you can self represent. I have done all three combinations of self rep, McKenzie Friend and barrister and the outcome has been about the same.

It depends on whether the child protection concerns are shared by anyone (children's services, CAFCASS etc.) as in some cases the courts will make an order for supervised contact ONLY with no progression to unsupervised until the child reaches 18. Obviously the concerns have to be pretty well documented and quite serious.

I've seen this happen when children's services were involved and backed the RP in court for supervised contact only with the NRP.

Even then the NRP can reapply to court to vary the contact order at a later date, but obviously they would have to prove a significant change.

Just to add - you can certainly go through the process without spending 20K. You don't need legal representation at all as HeadDoctor has explained.

Yep self-rep. Contact is pretty straight forward in a way simply because the child has this right...in the end there aren't very many variations of contact until breaches are made/variations applied for.