Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 23: "Page 2, line 6, at end insert—" ““(   )   psychological assessment or treatment”” The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 23 is a probing amendment suggested to us by the Law Society in order to highlight the issue of those families where higher level therapeutic or psychological intervention may be required to bring about real change in a situation and the outcome for the child. In the 2002 Making Contact Work report, produced by the Children Act Sub-Committee of the Advisory Board on Family Law, there was a recommendation that the essential powers that the courts need to require estranged parents to address the issue of contact should include the power to refer to a psychiatrist or a psychologist. The Bill introduces powers for the courts to direct parties in a contact case to a wide range of contact activity. However, the Bill appears to make no real provision for proper therapeutic or psychological intervention to seek to address a specific individual case. The Law Society have in mind, for example, a situation where one of the parents may be mentally ill or suffering from a personality disorder which may impact on establishing or maintaining contact with the child. There are also those difficult, intractable cases, which have tended to take a disproportionate amount of court time, where far more than an information session will be needed to seek to begin to change the situation. It would be very helpful if the Government set out their approach to the issue of those parents needing proper therapeutic and medical help in order to address the matter of contact. In laying this amendment, I invite the Minister to do so. I beg to move.