[Influencing factors on the course of supervised visitations in a parental counselling office]

Abstract

We report about a youth welfare service tool called supervised visitation (SV). SVs are intended to maintain contact and emotional relationship between child and absent parent. In the present study, we assessed a number of supposed influencing factors on course and result of SV. 55 % of the SV cases could eventually be transferred to regular contact without supervision. The majority of SV cases could be finished after a couple of months. The number of accompanying counselling sessions was often higher than the number of SVs themselves, a result stressing the significance of counselling. Younger as well as older children did benefit from SV. Opposed to some of the literature, in our study the success of SV did not depend on kind of referral or custody, specific indications, or the length of contact interruptions. We found a tendency though that a high number of risk factors is a potential risk for SV success.