The Children and Adoption Act 2006 (the Act), was implemented on the 8th December 2008. The Act provides new ways to help the courts find solutions in private law Children Act 1989 contact cases where there is conflict between the parties, for example, about who a child should see, and how often. The Act gives the courts more flexible powers to deal with cases where parties cannot reach agreement or cases where a person fails to comply with a contact order.

Discussion on the new law has been dominated by the rhetoric of pressure groups which claim to represent fathers unjustifiably denied relationships with their children after separation.
 
Prior to the Act, breach of a contact order by the resident parent was contempt of court, but remedies for contempt were rarely used. There was no reference in any legal analysis to enforcing an order against a non-resident parent. Government Papers suggested that following frequent breaches of contact orders, many non-resident parents simply ‘gave up' their struggle for contact.

The result of the Government consultations is the Children and Adoption Act 2006, which aims to provide ‘realistic and useable' sanctions for breach of a contact order.
 
Breaching orders
Where a contact order has been breached, there are provisions in the Act to enforce contact orders, enabling the court, on application, to impose an unpaid work requirement (an enforcement order) on the person who breaches a contact order without a reasonable excuse. This will give the courts greater flexibility in dealing with breaches of contact orders, and will be in addition to the existing powers to treat the breach of the order as a contempt of court. Courts will be able to take action in respect of a breach of an enforcement order by making that order more onerous or by making a further enforcement order. Concerns have already been raised about the prospect of criminalising mothers who object to contact.

Compensation
The Act also enables the court to award financial compensation from one person to another for losses arising from failure to comply with a contact order (for example, when the cost of a holiday has been lost).
 
Contact Activities
The Act also includes powers for the court to order ‘contact activities' – these include programmes, classes and counselling which aim to facilitate meaningful contact. Failing to attend a contact activity will also constitute a breach of the contact order, and the sanctions above can be applied.

Whilst the new act has been well received by Fathers' Rights campaign groups, there have been concerns raised about the effect sanctions may have on proceedings as a whole, creating further delay and worsening the relationship between parents.

There are also concerns that the act does not address the fundamental problems within these type of proceedings, such as whether the law strikes the right balance between resident and non-resident parents, and how to prevent some resident parents from manipulating the views of their children toward the non-resident parent to such an extent that any meaningful relationship is unlikely, whether or not contact is enforced.