Can anyone talk to me about their experience of supervised contact/contact centres please?

[sewingmachinesoflove]

I am currently no contact with my parents while I get my head around my upbringing with them in therapy.

I grew up with their emotional neglect and blinkeredness and was left for years to be abused for years by my sibling.

Unfortunately, it has taken me to reach the point of my children being 8 and 6 to finally, coherently piece everything together (through therapy, basically).

I would happily never see my parents again. However, my DC have an existing relationship with them. My parents live 200 miles away but have been engaged grandparents seeing them several times a year.

Initially I thought that I might be able to agree to occasional contact thoughout the year - supervised by me - but now I realise that any contact with my parents is massively detrimental to my mental health.

DH (understandably) doesn't want to chaperone visits.

At the moment it is looking increasingly that the only option is no contact at all and this is something I am exploring in therapy.

However, I am wondering what a middle ground might look like. Is it possible to pay for contact centres privately without a court order having been issued? Would this be detrimental to my DC?

I don't want my parents to have unsupervised contact with my DC. Is there any middle ground between no contact and me and DH supervising contact? There is no family member who could act as a supervisor, unfortunately...

Given their complete inability to keep me safe as a child for well over a decade them having unsupervised contact to my DC is completely out of bounds.

If your relationship with them was that damaging, is a relationship with your children wise?

"If your relationship with them was that damaging, is a relationship with your children wise?"

Good question, and one I'm exploring in therapy.

I appreciate you reply, but with all due respect I'm paying a professional to navigate me through the emotional minefield of this shit. Right now I just want to hear experiences of supervised contact and what that may or may not look like.

You need to check carefully. Many centres offer "supported" contact which means it isn't one to one. It's often several families in a playroom setting with one or two supervisors.

Supervised contact on a one to one basis is much rarer. The ones I had experience of as a former solicitor would only offer sessions approved by a court order, you couldn't approach them privately.

The one i use does offer supervised but I think you need a court referral to access that service. Also contact centre is seen as a stepping stone and not usually a permanent thing so would you be comfortable for things to progress to unsupervised in the future - and if not I would question if it's a good idea at all really. Only you can answer that.

Hi I'm a foster carer and take children to and from supervised contact...

This contact is generally ran by social services but the all source this out to private firms so I'm presuming you could do this yourself or contact social services for advice in regards to organising this.

Sometimes they can be in centres and are group contact and other children would be there being supervised, there are generally toys there and the contact worker would encourage play.

My only negative experience of these is that at times parents or grandparents can take the children and whisper things to them, a good contact worker would pick up on Thai but this is not always the case.

So if you're concerned in regards to your parents traumatising your children you would have to be very clear in regards to this.

As I say I have done this organised with social services so can only speak discuss my experiences

You do not need to feel at all guilty about removing toxic people from your life.

What benefits will it bring your children to continue to have a relationship with your toxic parents?. You are more than happy not to see them again and your DH does not quite understandably wants to chaperone your children to see them. So why subject your children at all to them further out of some misguided notions of FOG or societal convention?. You are the parents here and they are relying on your good judgment.

You would not have tolerated any of this behaviour from your parents from a friend, your family of origin are no different.

I would not go down the route of a contact centre and I have never seen them being at all used for this purpose. This thought may on some level also be your own FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) talking re your parents. I sincerely hope your own therapist as well has no bias about keeping families together despite the presence of mistreatment.

I doubt very much if either of your parents has at all apologised or importantly has accepted any responsibility for their actions. They have not fundamentally altered at all, such people really do not change.

If they were not good parents to you they will not be good grandparent figures to your children either. They could well go onto further treat your children in not too dissimilar ways as to how you were yourself treated as a child e.g. using your children as golden child and scapegoat to further continue their rotten family dynamic, playing one sibling off against the other, using your children to get back at you, buying their affections and trying to steal their hearts and minds from you people.

Given their behaviours with you why would you want your children to continue to have any relationship with them at all?. You already have physical distance between you, you further need to put mental distance between them and you people as a family unit as well.

You all need to be no contact with them. It will also do your children no favours at all for them to keep on seeing you as their parents and in particular you as their mother being so disrespected.

I would suggest you continue with the therapy and read "well we took you to Stately Homes" thread on these Relationships webpages as well as the resources contained at the start of that thread.
Your children are too young as well to realise that their grandparents could too easily manipulate them as well. The manipulation of them as well would happen also in any setting.

Thanks all.