Damn your eyes you contemptible scoundrel!
Posted on | January 26, 2012 | No Comments
You know those times when checking the to-do list doesn’t calm you down?
That.
So in lieu of a calm considered post (or even in lieu of a lengthy and time consuming but ill considered ranty post) please accept the following offerings:
Contempt: Don’t be in it to win it. You’d think that journalists that do reporting for a living would have a clue about what contempt of court is and what they can and can’t report. Goodness, I know nothing about criminal law but even I can work out that tweeting the name of a member of the jury in a high profile tax evasion trial is probably not a great idea. And I don’t think you have to be a lawyer to work out that reporting the evidence of a witness given under oath while the jury was not present is also a bad idea. So bad in fact that said journalist has been reported to the AG (yes this is a real story not hypothetical). And the jury in the Harry Redknapp trial have been discharged. Not a great start for the new era of in-court tweeting. On the up side, through this article I found two other great articles on the Legal Week website about contempt of court: Avoiding Contempt of Court : Tips for Tweeters and Bloggers by @Adamwagner1 and What Not to Tweet – A Lawyer’s Guide by John Bloor. (h/t @inner_temple). Perhaps the lady in this article should have read those articles before she face booked her way into clink (well, at risk of clink anyway).
And in other news: “Litigants in person could struggle to secure access to justice“. Not really news you might say, but a really interesting article nonetheless. As is this guest post on Richard Moorhead’s blog by a US judge, who shares his excellent tips on how to deal with the self represented – different law, universal problem it seems. Also travelling well is this post by Bluegrass Family Law about aggressive lawyers. I agree with the sentiment.
Of particular interest to me, as a mum of a boy due to start school within North Somerset in Sep 12, is the Serious Case Review Report in respect of the Nigel Leat case (N Som Safeguarding Children Board) . It does not fill me with confidence. The basic failures in Child Protection procedure within a school run under the auspices of my own Local Authority is quite shocking.
Jonathan James writes about an interesting case about judges meeting subject children: AJ v. JJ and others [2011] EWCA Civ 1448. He also writes about the recent Daily Mail article by a mum who is hostile to the idea of her ex’s new partner being involved in her child’s life that has generate over 1200 comments. Probably best if I let him deal with that one: *Ma’am. Please step aWAY from the article*.
And that concludes my ramble.
I’ve ticked “do blog post” off my list.
Next up: “finish draft grounds of appeal”.
Approaching Mediaton
Posted on | January 22, 2012 | No Comments
Once again I’ve spent a solid 3 day stint undertaking mediation training and I’m relieved to say it’s now over, apart from one assignment. You only realise how much you rely on a weekend of pootling in order to recharge for a Monday when it’s taken away. My recharging time has been eaten up by role play and hat swapping and ethical angst. I need a weekend.
That said I am positively abrim with information, ideas, questions, and opinions about mediation – all of which have been percolating away in the background whilst I got to grips with my 10.30 con for tomorrow (It’s been like having an internal soundtrack of that old coffee advert where the woman makes pretend percolator noises to disgust he fact they she is serving instant coffee to her dinner guests, although in truth this is more to do with tinnitus than metaphor).
Anyhoo, when they are fully brewed I will share those thoughts with you. But not tonight…Not tonight. I need a few minutes of nothing in particular before I hit the sack and move seamlessly from one week to another.
Bring it on. Zzzzz
Out On A Technicality
Posted on | January 20, 2012 | 11 Comments
I complain often enough about the LSC finding pathetic technicalities upon which to base the rejection of my claims for payment for work done (most recently a five figure sum which relates to work between 6 and 18 months ago on a single case, but more frequently the rejection of a smaller claim because I have a court seal (not readily forged) instead of the mandatory initial (easily forged) on my FAS form). But the recent refusal of a legal aid contract to the National Youth Advocacy Service (NYAS) to enable it to continue to represent children involved in intractable or complex private law children disputes really takes the biscuit.
In short, the LSC says that some of the office addresses of NYAS were omitted from their tender application. So that’s it. They’re out. No right of appeal. Notwithstanding the fact that NYAS dispute the suggestion the address information was omitted, saying that there was a technical error with the online portal which was the sole route for submitting tender applications. And notwithstanding the fact that the LSC presumably had the information it now complains was missing, since NYAS has been a provider since 1999.
From discussions I’ve had with local solicitors, the application process and the portal left something to be desired: no way of knowing whether or not your application had been correctly received or received at all, coupled with an inflexible deadline and no right of appeal left many very anxious.
There are around 70 organisations in the same boat, with equally valid grievances, but the NYAS case stands out for me. NYAS are unique – they are the only body other than CAFCASS who are able to represent these children, and there are some cases where a child’s trust in CAFCASS has been lost, or where CAFCASS lack capacity or expertise. Continue reading “Out On A Technicality” »
Child Support Support from Gingerbread
Posted on | January 19, 2012 | No Comments
Gingerbread has launched an email advice pack for single parents who are looking for information about child maintenance payments.
Child maintenance is an essential form of support for many single parent families, but making arrangements to ensure it gets paid can be complicated and confusing. With the government talking of overhauling the way child maintenance is currently managed through the Child Support Agency, it pays to have all the facts.
Gingerbread’s child maintenance email pack gives single parents access to expert advice at the click of a mouse on topics such as:
- Getting the right amount of child maintenance
- Coming to agreements with an ex-partner
- Enforcing payments
- Using the Child Support Agency.
Single parents can get the pack sent to straight to their inbox by heading to http://gingerbread.org.uk/emailadvice.aspx and entering their email address.
The child maintenance email pack is the latest in a growing library of email advice from Gingerbread, which aims to give single parents the information they need on the issues that affect their families – quickly, privately and at a time that suits them.
The other email packs cover:
- advice for women who are single and pregnant
- advice for parents who are separating
- advice on looking for work
- advice on benefits for single people
- advice about help whilst studying
In essence the “packs” are just an email signposting recipients to a selection pre-existing factsheets available on the Gingerbread website that are relevant to the topic in question, but I can see that for some this may be an aid to navigation that will increase the accessibility of information and enable it to reach more people.
Bailii
Posted on | January 18, 2012 | No Comments
A long time ago I promised I would do my bit to help BAILII raise funds. And then I forgot about it.
Bailii are brill - please donate to them!
I have now made good on my promise and gift aided 5% of the funds I have raised through advertising on Pink Tape to BAILII. Not a fortune, but it’s better than a poke in the eye.
This seems like a good opportunity to remind others that BAILII do struggle for funds, and that they are hugely important to the legal blogging community and more broadly in terms of access to justice.
If you run a blog that links to BAILII, or if you are a lawyer that relies upon BAILII for transcripts – ask your chambers, firm, boss – yourself – if you could donate something.
You could also do their online survey.
Go on.
Go on gowahn gowahn gowahn gowahn
Go-wan.
Well, you did ask
Posted on | January 16, 2012 | 6 Comments
This is a funny sort of book review. I’m not going to tell you the name of the book or the author. It is in fact an anonymised book review of an already anonymised book which was ghost written on behalf of a father previously involved in lengthy family court proceedings in the County and High Courts. The book tells the story of his relationship, the birth of his son, the breakdown of that relationship and ensuing battles both in and out of court. Ultimately, awesomely lengthy proceedings result in alienation of child from father. However if I told you the name of the book or the pseudonym of the author I’d have to kill you. And we wouldn’t want that. So I’m going to call him Mr Pseudonym.
anonymous, courtesy of Matt Westervelt on Flickr
I have been hounded repeatedly for this review by the representative of what appears to be some self publishing promotional service employed by Mr Pseudonym - have I read it yet, would I like to interview the author, can he write me a guest post? So lady, here’s the review. And thanks but no thanks to the other stuff.
First of all let me explain why I’m not going to tell you the name of the book or the Mr Pseudonym’s pseudonym. The reasons are fourfold:
- I wouldn’t do such a thing to you, my loyal readers. If you knew what it was called I fear you would feel compelled to seek it out. You would thank me, if only you could understand just how excruciating a read it was. If there wasn’t already a law against it (see 3) I would be saying there should be.
- Whilst I am not shy of saying what I think, I have no particular desire to publicly humiliate another human being, let alone one self evidently suffering from the anguish of a lengthy and acrimonious family dispute, and the loss of a child.
- Whilst it may have escaped the author, the publisher (a US self publishing house) and the many many international distributors who are offering this book for sale online (Amazon, WHSmith, Barnes & Noble to name but a few), there are (as I see it) some legal problems with the publication of this book. Of which more below.
- Even if I’m wrong about the legal problems I am uncomfortable with the extent to which the privacy of the ex Mrs Pseudonym and the parties’ child is being invaded, and the possible impact this book might have on them were it to become known to them. I want no part in that. Sadly, this limits the extent to which I am able to quote the more exquisitely awful passages.
Continue reading “Well, you did ask” »
Statistically Speaking
Posted on | January 15, 2012 | 1 Comment
Last week a range of quarterly court statistics were published by the MoJ. The condensed version of the summary is that care is up massively and everything else is down (not so as you’d know it to hear the government bang on about all those unnecessary and ever-escalating interminable private law disputes).
But what I thought was quite interesting was the table showing the breakdown as between individual courts (the file labelled Family courts and mediation (CSV) in the right hand column), not least because my own local court (Bristol) sits despondently towards the bottom of the league in terms of speedy resolution of care proceedings, with around 2/3 taking longer than 50 weeks to complete. On average 50% of cases are completed within 50 weeks. In Bristol it is 33%. The average duration of care proceedings in England & Wales is 55 weeks; in Bristol it is 75 weeks. Extrapolating from the figures, it appears that 6% of cases take more than 80 weeks to complete. I can account for at least one of those.
There is an enormous amount of data, and it’s difficult without spending hours poring over it to see a pattern that helps us understand why care cases take so long in Bristol. It seems to me that there are a number of possible explanations, apart from the loquaciousness of those of us practising our advocacy skills there: Bristol has a large contingent of private law children cases, although in fairness other courts with a lot of private law business manage better average case durations for public work. What we aren’t able to add into the mix, and what I think are crucial, are the judicial numbers. Bristol has only 3 family Circuit Judges (two of whom sit in civil / crime) and only 2 (I think) district judges ticketed for care. Listing is a real difficulty, but this also applies to other courts. The geography and spread of other courts in a region impacts upon the complexity and nature of cases which arrive at the door of a care centre. Bristol is the receiving court for many transfers up from outlying FPCs, and is the only court within my regular stomping ground to house more than one family CJ.
There are any number of other factors which might bear upon the meaning of these figures. The raw data is interesting but not much use. I hope that somebody somewhere is busily analysing these figures, placing them in the context of the different demands upon and resources available to individual courts, and trying to draw some useful conclusions about what is making some courts more speedy than others (someone assisting Ryder J is doing just this one hopes). I for one would really like to know if we are doing something different in our neck of the woods, or if it is just external pressures which have inevitably resulted in poorer timescales. I don’t think there is any material difference in case management practice between Bristol and other courts I’m familiar with, although they all have their quirks.
Thoughts?
You have a gazillion unread emails
Posted on | January 12, 2012 | 5 Comments
When I see something interesting on twitter or tinternet I email myself a link. This happens a lot when I’m busy – I snatch five minutes to mess around on the interweb but have no time to read that interesting article or blog post. And often that kitkat time is somewhere with a dodgy signal so I see a tantalising tweet and spent an age trying to load the article it is referring to.
The upshot is an inbox full of emails that I make a conscious effort to lead marked as unread until they are read and discarded or read and acted upon (for example by incorporation into a blog post). This is efficient but anxiety provoking. I cannot stand having unread mail. That little red circle on my iphone burns a hole in my handbag: “7 unread messages. 7 unread messages. 8 unread messages. 10 unread messages”. It cannot be ignored. It is an easy task left undone.
And so I need to purge. Today I have a number of unread emails (not to mention a multitude of browser tabs). All of which I have sent myself by way of masochistic self-reminder. Humour me (in reverse chronological order): Continue reading “You have a gazillion unread emails” »
Guest Post: Social media – our master or our servant?
Posted on | January 11, 2012 | 3 Comments
This is a guest post written by Sarah Phillimore (@svphillimore), a barrister at St John’s Chambers. It arises from a discussion Sarah, myself and other colleagues had last weekend about the difficulty in obtaining s26 contact orders in placement proceedings and the spate of media reports of teenagers tracked down on Facebook by their biological family, not always with a happy ending.
Social media – our master or our servant?
I dimly remember being a teenager. It was not a great time. It would have been much worse if I had been adopted and on top of my hormonal struggles to come to terms with my place in the world, I then had to cope with the sudden discovery via Facebook that numerous members of my biological family wanted to get in touch and share their perspective about why I was adopted.
Binoculars courtesy of tunnelarmr on flickr
The human part of me feels compassion for the families who have had to face this; in some cases the fall out from such sudden reintroduction to the birth family has been massive and children have decided to move out of their adopted homes. But the less compassionate, lawyer part of me says ‘good’. Because perhaps now we can kick start more debate about post adoption direct contact. We can’t have a blanket assumption that such contact is either good or bad as each case involves a multiplicity of complicated facts and a variety of different people. Direct contact involves a dynamic relationship between people that changes over time. However, if there is now a serious risk of haphazard and unstructured post adoption contact being facilitated through the medium of social networking sites, we need to decide how we deal with that situation and our decisions should be based on good evidence.
The last 50 years have seen enormous shifts in societal attitudes towards accepting different concepts of ‘family’. Adoption is no longer a mechanism to cover up a shameful indiscretion and to encourage adopted children to vanish without trace into their ‘new’ family. There is recognition of the likely strength of our curiosity about our origins and the pull of the blood tie.
According to the Adoption Information Line, 70% of children adopted are between 1 -4 years. Only a very few are under 1 or over 10. The numbers of children adopted each year have decreased significantly from about 21,000 in 1975 to 5,797 in 1995; a reflection of the increased availability of abortion and the societal shift that no longer stigmatises illegitimacy. Adopted children are very unlikely to be brand new babies, given up by desperate teenage girls, but rather older children who have already suffered or were likely to suffer significant harm from their birth parents. We are thus considering a group of children who had a less than ideal start to life, may suffer difficulties with attachment and may retain memories of the harm done to them. It is likely that these children will find it difficult to cope with sudden and unsupported reintroduction to their birth family.
Research suggests that ‘communicative openness’ in adoptive families – how they think and talk about adoption – is positively linked to ‘structural openness’ – contact with birth family members – but that children’s emotional and behavioural development was not related to either the type of contact they were having with their birth families or the communicative openness of their adoptive parents (see Post-Adoption contact and Openness in Adoptive Parents’ Minds: Consequences for Children’s Development Elsbeth Neil Br JSoc Work (2009) 39).
More research is needed; as Elsbeth Neil recognises ‘finding empirical answers to questions about outcomes of contact after adoption is frustrated by significant methodological challenges …what is meant by contact after adoption? The type, frequency, duration and management of contact all need to be considered, as does the type of birth relative involved.’ Continue reading “Guest Post: Social media – our master or our servant?” »
Mediation Marathon
Posted on | January 6, 2012 | 5 Comments
I’ve just spent the first of six days training to be a family mediator. It’s been daunting but exciting, interesting but exhausting. Tomorrow the role play begins. It must be done. Eyes on the prize an’ all that. However, whilst not overbrimming with enthusiasm for role play, nor for losing my precious weekend to such masochism, I am enthusiastic about the skills I am learning, and to put them to use both in the context of mediation and in my court based work.
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