What are the Safe and Meaningful Contact (SaMC) Guidelines?


The SaMC Guidelines (Burke and Woodhouse, 2021) offer practitioners an evidence-based practice tool for decision making, managing and reviewing contact/keeping in touch/family time arrangements. The SaMC Guidelines are designed for use in public law cases. They organise decision-making around the developmental and trauma recovery needs of children and young people across various contexts, including short-term or permanent foster/kinship/special guardianship care, and post-adoption.  Users of the online SaMC Guidelines can automatically generate a report with a contact and support plan based on their responses.


The SaMC Guidelines integrate contemporary attachment theory and the latest research into contact arrangements to identify essential information decision makers require to make evidence-based, trauma-responsive decisions about the child’s contact needs. 


Completing the SaMC framework offers users evidence-based guidance about:

Benefits of contact: In what ways contact can be meaningful to the child - by identifying what purposes contact has the potential to achieve with the right support.

Support: How contact can best be facilitated for the child, carer and birth relative to ensure it is safe and meaningful.

Safety: Whether contact needs to be paused as no meaningful purpose can safely be achieved at this point.

Frequency: How often contact might occur to serve the identified purposes using the SaMC frequency continuum. 

Supervision: What level of supervision, if any, is required?

Recommendations: Upon completing the online SaMC Guidelines, users can download a report explaining their input and automatically generating a contact support plan. This can be used to evidence recommendations made about contact arrangements, explain the purpose of contact and outline a contact and support plan.


Become a licensed user of the SaMC Guidelines

Practitioners must complete the one-day training to be licensed to use the SaMC Guidelines. Click on the box below to commission training for your organisation. Download the flyer for more information. Alternatively, you can undertake the online anytime training.  


Dr Chris Burke, Clinical Psychologist

Dr Chris Burke, Clinical Psychologist, developed the SaMC Guidelines. Chris works as an expert witness in the family courts. He is regularly instructed to offer psychological opinion about residential and contact arrangements for children no longer living with their birth relatives. The SaMC Guidelines evolved from Chris's passion to ensure decisions about maintaining relationships are centred around the developmental and recovery needs of the child. 


Burke, C. and Woodhouse, A. (2021). Safe and Meaningful Contact Guidelines. Unpublished protocol.

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Psychological Minds Training Testimonials

Beth Neil, Professor of Social Work

University of East Anglia

"Excellent framework - really clearly explained. The focus on the child's history and current needs and how contact can help (or not help) is really important."

Social Worker

"I love the relational focus that includes the carer as an active participant (rather than just someone expected to carry out a job)."

Family Law Solicitor

"I thought the whole session was fantastic. So interesting in fact that I completely lost track of time and couldn’t believe it was over. It has forced me to look at my own perceptions of how things ought to be done. It had not occurred to me that whilst birth parents may not be able to “parent” they could still have a constructive role of some sort to play in a child’s life. It will change how I practice moving forward."

Clinical Psychologist

"The Safe and Meaningful Contact training is an absolute necessity for professionals in this field. It gave me a comprehensive framework to think about the important factors to consider when looking at contact for children and young people and made me feel more confident in my decision-making. Hugely recommend this training to anybody working in this field."

Lead Occupational Therapist, CAMHS

"Part of my role in CAMHS is offering consultations to professionals supporting children who are in the care system. We are often asked about the child’s contact with their biological family. This can often be complex and people can hold strong feelings about what should happen. I have found the Safe and Meaningful Contact guidelines to provide an essential and valuable framework for thinking through all aspects of contact to ensure it is facilitated in the best interests of the child. I highly recommend this course for professionals involved in decision-making around contact."

Family Law Solicitor

"I found Chris’s analysis of the effect of contact arrangements on the child to be particularly interesting and informative."

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Evidence Based Courses

"Across placement and permanency arrangements, the reviewed evidence demonstrates the value of training and professional support for all involved in contact—both in establishing the purpose of contact and ensuring that arrangements are implemented and managed accordingly". Iyer et al, 2020.

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