The Treehouse Family Centre
About the Treehouse
The Treehouse Family Centre provides safe and supportive spaces where children can spend time with a parent or family member they do not live with.
When families experience separation, conflict or safety concerns, maintaining healthy family relationships can be challenging. Through professionally supported services, we help children maintain meaningful connections in a safe, welcoming, and child-focused environment.
Because every child deserves to feel safe, seen and free to form healthy family connections.
What Is a Child Supervised Contact Centre?
A Child Supervised Contact Centre is a specialised facility designed to protect children while supporting their right to maintain meaningful relationships with their parents.
Supervised contact is used when parents are unable to safely manage contact on their own. This may be due to:
- High levels of conflict between parents
- Safety or welfare concerns
- A breakdown in trust or communication
- Recommendations from a court, mediator, social worker or psychologist
Every visit is supported by a trained and neutral supervisor. Our priority is to ensure that children feel physically and emotionally safe while maintaining healthy family connections.
Why We Exist
The Treehouse Family Centre exists to provide a safe pathway to connection.
We believe that children should not lose meaningful relationships because adults are struggling to navigate separation or conflict.
Our aim is to:
- Protect children from exposure to adult conflict
- Provide safe, structured contact where supervision is necessary
- Support the implementation of court orders and parenting plans
- Reduce repeated litigation by stabilising contact arrangements
- Place the child’s wellbeing at the centre of every decision.
Connection, not conflict.
Supervised contact is not about punishment.
It is about giving children the opportunity to maintain meaningful relationships in a safe and supportive environment.
Who We Support
Children
- A safe, calm environment to spend time with a parent
- Protection from conflict, pressure and unsafe situations
- Contact that prioritises emotional wellbeing and developmental needs
Parents
and Caregivers
- Reassurance that contact occurs in a supervised, neutral setting
- Reduced conflict during handovers
- Professional oversight and consistency
Legal and Helping Professionals
- A reliable, child-focused facility to support court orders and agreements
- Structured supervision aligned with best-practice principles
Services Offered at the Treehouse
Supervised Child Contact
Professionally supervised contact sessions in a child-friendly environment, ensuring safety, neutrality and consistency.
Safe Handovers and Drop-Offs
Supported child handovers designed to minimise conflict and protect children from adult disputes.
Reunification Support
Structured support aimed at rebuilding parent-child relationships where contact has broken down or been disrupted.
Child Participation and Voice-of-the-Child
Ethical, age-appropriate processes that allow children’s voices to be heard without placing them in the middle of conflict.
Mediation-Adjacent Support
Facilities and services that support family mediation and assist with the practical implementation of parenting plans and court orders.
Making Support More Accessible
The Treehouse Family Centre is operated by the Samuel Lawson Foundation, a registered non-profit organisation committed to ensuring that children and families can access professional support, regardless of their financial circumstances.
To make this possible, the Centre will operate through a hybrid model:
- Families who are able to afford private services will contribute towards the cost of the supervision.
- Families experiencing financial hardship may qualify for subsidised services through our fundraising initiatives and corporate partnerships.
- Referrals will be accepted from courts, attorneys, mediators, social workers, psychologists and other helping professionals.
This approach allows us to provide safe, professional and sustainable services while ensuring that financial barriers do not prevent children from maintaining meaningful family relationships.
We beleive that a child’s opportunity to spend time with a parent they do not live with should not depend solely on family’s ability to pay.
Building the Treehouse
We are currently preparing for the launch of the Treehouse Family Centre.
We are actively:
- Securing suitable premises
- Raising funds to subsidise supervised contact sessions
- Finalising operational protocols and child-safeguarding frameworks
- Building partnerships with legal and mental-health professionals
Our goal is to open the Centre with the highest standards of safety, professionalism and child focused care.
Help build the Treehouse
Every child deserves the opportunity to maintain safe and meaningful family connections.
By supporting the Treehouse Family Centre, you are helping to make professional services more accessible to children and families who need them most.
You can help by:
- Making a once-off or monthly donation
- Sponsoring supervised contact sessions
- Partnering with us as a corporate or CSI funder
- Offering professional or in-kind support
Every contribution helps a child spend time with parent they do not live with in a safe and supported environment.