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Social Work vocabulary · Children, Families and Care

Contact

Meaning in social work, with examples

/ˈkɒntækt/nounCommon term

In social work, contact means: Time that a child in care, or a child of separated parents, spends with parents, brothers and sisters or other relatives they do not live with.

In Turkish: görüşme, kişisel ilişki kurulması, aileyle görüşme

How it is used

A UK term; US English usually says visitation or family time. Contact can be supervised, with a worker present, or unsupervised, and face to face, by phone or online. Social workers arrange and supervise contact and write contact notes.

Example sentences

  1. The children have supervised contact with their mother every Saturday.

  2. Contact with his older sister is very important to him.

Common collocations

  • supervised contact
  • contact arrangements
  • contact centre
  • contact notes
  • family contact
  • looked-after childA child who is cared for by a local authority, for example in foster care or a children's home, either under a court order or with the parents' agreement.
  • foster careA form of care in which a child who cannot live with their own parents lives, for a short or long time, with another approved family.
  • placementThe home or setting where a child in care or an adult needing care is placed to live; also a period of supervised practice for social work students.
  • case notesWritten records of contacts, conversations, observations and actions in a case, made by the worker as the work happens.

More terms: Children, Families and Care

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