I wish the Courts where more intouch with real life, they often dont seem to be. But saying that being a Judge must be a difficult job,possibly a thankless task like social work. Judge’s should work in Children’s Services offices for a least one week a year.

Duty and Assessment/Intake Team
Care Management/ LAC Teams
Disabled Children’s Team
Sixteen Plus Teams/ After Care
YOT-
Children’s Family Centre’s- if there are any left, after the disasters of Sure Start!

and maybe CAFCASS who seem in a difficult situation, not enough Children’s Guardian’s/ welfare reporters……..

Its good to hear that solicitors and others want to debate about the Court situation, with social workers, have you let BASW know?? just a thought.How many Court Users Groups have social workers in their ranks, frontline social workers, not just the managers……..

I’m certainly not arguing for irresponsible reporting, though I‘m not sure how you distinguish or discriminate. If the press are determined to publish something irresponsible (and they often do) I don’t really see how you stop them – better that than some form of ministry-approved accreditation.

Back to the debate. I accept that ultimately there needs to be some form of access to the courts when all else has failed, and that any form of alternative dispute resolution has to be governed by legislation, but it does seem to me that contact and residence disputes are not essentially legal disputes, and that a legal solution is often not appropriate. I also believe that enabling courts to make these decisions has the effect of ‘infantilising’ parents and rendering them unable to make even the most basic decisions. Self-help fora are full of parents going to court over the choice of one state school over another or whether to have a child vaccinated. Parents need to take responsibility again for their children.

I suggested in the earlier posting that there was a similarity between very diverse individuals and organisations about how family law could be changed. Here are some possible areas for discussion:

Sandra Davies of Mishcon de Reya (Parental Separation, Children and the Courts, http://www.mishcon.com/assets/managed/docs/downloads/doc_2395/policy-briefing-paper-parental-separation-children-and-the-courts.pdf)recently proposed ‘Conflict Clinics’ which would provide parents with ‘therapeutic input’ and would be paid for by diverting funds from Legal Aid and from CAFCASS. She also controversially recommended increasing the cost of an application from £175 to £1,000, and changing the 1989 Children Act so that such an application could only be made on the provision of a ‘certificate of failure of Family Therapy’.

In 2003 Fathers 4 Justice suggested in our Blueprint for Family Law in the 21st Century a new Family Support Service which would provide ‘high-quality state provision of mediation services’, funded by scrapping CAFCASS and utilising re-trained CAFCASS staff. These would implement what we called the ParentShare Scheme which was a gender-neutral way of re-evaluating family relationships, involving a new language of family law in which terms like ‘contact’ and ‘residence’ became redundant, to be replaced by ‘parenting time’. Parents would agree ParentShare Plans either directly, or through a mandatory session with an advisor/mediator. Only where these broke down would cases be transferred to a new Family Magistrates Service.

In November 2007, in her report into in-court conciliation (Trinder, L. & Kellett, J., The longer-term outcomes of in-court conciliation, Ministry of Justice Research Series 15/07, University of East Anglia, November 2007, http://www.justice.gov.uk/docs/211107.pdf) Liz Trinder advised, ‘Rather than concentrating resources within the family justice system an alternative approach would be to develop comprehensive services for families in the community, including relationship-orientated dispute resolution services. Courts could then become very much a last resort when all else has failed or for cases involving allegations of harm.’ This view is echoed by Nicholas Crichton who said in 2006, ‘I do not see a difficulty in saying to people, “If you want access to a judge in a courtroom, which is a very expensive facility and not necessarily the best facility to try to resolve your problems, you have first of all to try one of a range of options to see if we can find another solution to your problem.” ‘

Lastly, no list of alternatives to in-court litigation should be complete without a mention of the ill-fated Early Interventions project devised in 2003 by the New Approaches to Contact family policy review agency (NATC). This project would have introduced a fully articulated, fully-costed, fully-detailed and fully-endorsed, model of dispute resolution based on eight years of protracted research and discussion, including analysis of functioning and successful schemes such as the Norwegian system and the ‘Florida model’. It was endorsed by the Department for Constitutional Affairs Minister, the President of the Family Division, the High Court Family judiciary, the Family Law Bar Association, the chairman of the Solicitors Family Law Association (now Resolution), the Coalition for Equal Parenting, Fathers Direct, Families Need Fathers (there was no F4J at the time) and the leading child development consultants, as well as other leading stakeholders.

The two core elements of the project were, 1) to introduce programmes to educate separated parents how to act in the best interests of their children, leading to Parenting Plans, and 2) compulsory mediation – which would have required new legislation. As Judge John Lenderman of Florida said, ‘I’m totally convinced mediation should be mandatory. Every judge that I’ve talked to around the United States says mandatory mediation is the way to go.’ Mr Justice Munby (as he then was)said, ‘Some will be disappointed – and I can understand why – that the Government‘s very recently announced pilot scheme proposals only encourage the use of mediation and do not make it mandatory.’

As we all know, the project was hijacked and scuppered by Bruce Clark and Brian Kirby of CAFCASS and resulted – eventually – in the wholly inadequate reforms in the Children and Adoption Act 2006.

There are, then, numerous proposals for reform which have widespread support, which involve some form of mandatory mediation, leading to binding parental agreements, backed up by access to a much revised non-adversarial and gender-neutral legal system when all else fails. They can be paid for out of savings made elsewhere, and staffed by existing personnel. They render arguments about open justice and anonymity irrelevant.

Why not?

And again I think you misinterpret my position by suggesting somehow that in arguing for the promotion of responsible reporting and the minimisation of unbalanced coverage I am anti-free speech or advocating that only pro-courts reporting can be permitted. It should be clear from other posts on this blog that I see the absolute importance of reporting in both educating people as to the positive work done by the courts AND exposing the failures or injustices that occur. Surely you are not arguing for irresponsible reporting? I think we are actually not so very far apart on this. The conundrum is how we balance privacy with the need for openness and I don’t profess to have the answers.

If I wanted a cliquey, exclusive ‘debate’ behind closed doors this post would not exist, and nor would the string of comments forming beneath it. There may be others who do want such an exclusive debate but I am not one of them.

Nick, maybe you can explain in your next comment how you propose to take contact and residence disputes out of the legal arena? I’ve no doubt that mediation and other innovative schemes may be better ways for disputes to be resolved or worked through, but there will I think always be some cases (hopefully fewer and fewer) where someone has to take decisions that parents cannot or will not take.

I’d like to think that we can actually have discussion rather than simply hurling insults and making sweeping generalisations.

I suspect, Simon, that the last thing Lucy wants is a truly open debate; after all, she intends to limit it to ‘a debate amongst professionals working in the family justice system about this – lawyers, judges, social workers, court staff.’ No jounalists, no academics, no politicians, and certainly noone who has actually been through the system, such as a (cover your ears) parent or an articulate child.

And just look at the censorship she wants to impose on the system, ‘It is of course imperative that whatever the rules permit to be heard, disclosed or published, safeguards should be in place to promote responsible reporting and minimise unbalanced coverage.’ We must only let the public hear what they need to hear.

Public confidence in the family justice system has been successfully undermined thanks to the work of tireless campaigners such as Simon Clayton and Michael Pelling. That is as it should be: this is not a system in which the public should place any confidence. If confidence is to be restored (and it was never really confidence, merely ignorance) then it will not be achieved by cliquey, exclusive ‘debate’ behind closed doors. It can only be achieved through constructive, wholesale reform.

As Simon says, we have the answers. It isn’t rocket science, as they say. Even the Family Court Bench Book regards family law as ‘not intellectually particularly demanding’. Just as well, considering all those third class law degrees from third class universities.

Curiously many others have the answers too. Sandra Davies (of Mishcon de Reya) made proposals recently almost identical to those in the Fathers 4 Justice Blueprint of 2003. They are echoed by very diverse quarters, from the feminist academic Liz Trinder to the excellent charity Centre for Separated Families. We all know what needs to be done and how to achieve it. Unfortunately the first step is to take contact and residence disputes out of the legal arena, and that is where we immediately lose the support of the ‘lawyers, judges, social workers, and court staff’ who are so dependent on perpetuating acrimonious and adversarial dispute.

I sincerely hope that Simon keeps a close eye on his daughter now that he has placed her in a vulnerable position by providing the public with her name, full date of birth, address, name of school, interests and numerous photos [****details of where such information can be found edited out by familoo****].

point, all the argument dotted about the media web etc was first developed in my various statements (self developed) to the CoA in 2006 and since i have lobbied the many journalist to follow and have through various channels ensured that the topic remains live. And more important that journalists and MPs accept the implications of various positions in the REAL world. The Times may try to take credit (Frances Gibb, who takes my calls, accused me of blackmailing her – i hold my hands up if telling them – she and Camilla, i’ll see they lose their jobs if they don’t write properly on the issue – and they DID – after my threat). Anyway, the fact is that best part of half of what appeared in the Times over the last year is culled out of my various correspondence with them. I can prove. I have a range of folk who feed in to me and feed back out what i work out with the likes of Dr Michael Pelling. We are not stupid. And we DO have the answers. Straw won’t talk to us, indeed virtually everyone is decidedly neurotic in how they dip in and out of this issue.
Even my 10 year old daughter can see that the 5 year discussion on this issue is absurd and dysfunctional – a national embarrassment. Bentham who she can now quote said it all yet we seem unable of moving forward despite everyone agreeing we must.

We have the answers.

Control freak modern Britain of course can’t handle the “amateur” (hardly – i’m educated and have dedicated 5 yrs of my life to this – on and off full time).

This issue was developed (Munby etc) to placate the rightful protest of those campaigning for reform. We have certainly the answers ready if anyone would for a second deal with us like the ordinary, sensible, not-looking-for-limelight ( I am a VERY private chap), people we are who have thought through all of what this is about as it is US who are affected.

This issue is really at heart about the fact that the largely rather retrograde (as it is a Cinderella profession – not forced to modernise) bumbling dinosaurs who are stuck in a Victorian mindset, establishment, who define Family Law, need to let go. In other words class. An old fashioned effete ruling class is refusing to give up to a realistic modern more democratic approach.
It doesn’t need any law degree or any inside knowledge – you just look at the body language of the poor souls – even at the top, stuck working in family law – they are ground down by a dinosaur, bullying, entirely intellectually devoid, mindset that is foisted on them from an unaccountable effete dictatorship.

(I can PROVE – even just a review of my own tussles in the media – radio stuff, shows that supposedly senior people from the legal profession simply cannot be bothered to read their own professional material such as FLR)

Give me and a few others some office space, minor funding, and a proper voice, and we will find the answers needed.

And don’t forget that our friends have indeed taught themselves the art of webmaster supremacy – fact – so we are never now going to be silenced.
SC
simonclayton@post.com
070 7979 7190