In recent years the charity Reunite has seen an increase in the number of calls to their advice line from left-behind parents who are having difficulty in maintaining contact with their children following one parent’s successful application for leave to remove the child to a foreign jurisdiction.  This is of major concern to Reunite as clearly it will have a negative effect on the child and also is in breach of the UN Convention on the rights of the child and our own domestic law which encourages both parents to take an active role in a child’s life.  

The initial aim of Reunite's research is to obtain an indication of the number of leave to remove applications involving this jurisdiction between 1st January 2006 and the present date, how many of those resulted in leave to remove being granted, and how many of those contained an order concerning contact between the child and the left-behind parent and family.

However, a further aim of Reunite's research is to evaluate the success of the contact orders and whether or not the left-behind parent and child have been able to maintain a satisfactory relationship. In order to achieve this, a series of telephone interviews will be undertaken with the parents involved in the cases.

The Ministry of Justice is kindly supporting Reunite in undertaking this research exercise and we hope our findings from the research will assist policymakers and the Judiciary in future cases of leave to remove, and in particular influence decisions made regarding contact between the left-behind parent and child.

If you are a parent who has been involved in such a case, and would be willing to talk to us in confidence about your experience, both positive and negative, we would be pleased to hear from you.  Please e-mail Dr Freeman at reunite@dircon.co.uk.