A family court has stopped a father from having supervised contact with his two children, ruling that restarting face-to-face contact would carry too great a risk of emotional harm at the present time.

In XR v ZP, the Central Family Court was considering arrangements for a boy aged 11 and a girl aged 9, who live with their mother. The father had not seen the children since October 2022 and applied to the court for contact, arguing that the mother was deliberately preventing it.

The mother denied blocking contact and said she had tried to facilitate it safely. She raised a series of concerns about the father’s behaviour and reliability, including incidents that had led her to stop contact.

A Cafcass section 7 report prepared in 2023 recorded that both children loved their father and wanted to see him. However, it also noted the boy’s account of seeing his father slap his mother, and information from the children’s school suggesting he had been distressed by what he witnessed. The report recommended that the children live with their mother and that the father complete a domestic abuse programme and a parenting course before contact progressed beyond supervision.

One supervised contact session took place in December 2023. The judge described the notes from that session as very positive, showing warmth, affection and enjoyment between the father and the children.

Despite that, contact did not continue. The court heard evidence of repeated difficulties in setting up supervised sessions, long gaps without contact, and periods when the father was abroad. The judge found that while the mother had not always handled matters perfectly, she had not set out to block contact. Responsibility for the failure to establish consistent contact lay mainly with the father.

The judge was also concerned about messages the father sent directly to his son through a gaming platform, telling him that his mother was preventing contact and asking him to keep their conversations secret. The court said the messages were not child-focused and placed the child in the middle of the parents’ conflict, causing distress.

By the time of the final hearing, the father was attending by video link because he was on bail and required to live away from the mother’s area. The court was not asked to decide whether allegations of abuse were true and stressed that this was not a fact-finding hearing. However, the judge took into account the uncertainty created by ongoing criminal proceedings involving the father, and the risk that contact might start and then stop again.

Balancing the competing risks, the judge concluded that restarting supervised contact was not in the children’s best interests at this stage. The existing contact order was discharged.

Instead, the court allowed the father indirect contact. He may write to the children and send cards and gifts through a third party, with the mother to pass them on only if appropriate. The judge said the letters should focus on the children and avoid criticism of the mother or explanations about the dispute.

The judge said the father could apply again in future if the criminal matters are resolved and he can show consistent engagement and insight, but made final orders to bring the long-running proceedings to an end.

Please contact us if you would like more information about the issues raised in this article or any aspect of family law.

Source:

XR v ZP (Central Family Court)
Neutral citation: [2025] EWFC 408 (B)
Judge: HHJ Robertson
Date: 18 November 2025