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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

I am delighted to hear that the department is proposing to use child contact centres as places where a draft voluntary agreement might be provided to families. That is an extremely good idea. I declare an interest as a patron of a Welsh child contact centre. I hope that the Minister appreciates how many of these child contact centres are in danger of not staying open. I am a governor of Coram, which is closing its child contact centre in March because it does not make any money. The Government, in the DCSF, are very good at providing for the opening of child contact centres and helping to fund them for three years, but they are not good at continuing them. The Minister’s department might like to encourage the DCSF to help contact centres to remain open for the very valuable extra service that they might provide. I thought that the Minister should know that a lot of contact centres are in real danger of closing down.