More tales of family justice…

Overheard at court: Social workers openly discussing their reluctance to vigorously search for missing putative father in case he were to ask the LA to exercise their duty to assess him as carer, thereby causing further delay to finalising plans for out of family placement of child. Good grief Charlie Brown!

Trad. Anon.

An anonymous correspondent reports as follows: I spent six glorious hours at court yesterday with time to chat to colleagues.  We ended up comparing notes on the various manoeuvres local authorities are trying to use to get out of paying any money for anything at all. My best story is that of one unnamed London [...]

No news was good news

Wall notes a fairly fundamental discrepancy between what el Pres is saying about his Interim Guidance (it won’t be extended) and what Anthony Douglas of CAFCASS is saying (it will). At the time of writing the link in Wall’s post is down, but you can find a report of what AD told the House of [...]

Pink Tape – Best Legal Commentary Award

Hurrah! The recognition I have always craved. Almost as good as a reported case. Well, almost. Pink Tape is the proud recipient of a Blawggie Award in the category Best Legal Commentary. Thanks to Law Actually for running the thing. Some would challenge the categorisation of my commentary as ‘legal’ (in both senses of the [...]

Judicial Review of the LSC – UPDATE

The group of family legal aid firms represented by Nicholas Bowen QC in their JR against the LSC (see yesterday’s post) have been granted special leave to intervene as  interested parties in the Law Society’s own JR which is listed for hearing on 21-22 Sept. The Law Society are in the restricted position of being [...]

Dishonest Spin

The General Social Care Council Conduct Committee has ruled on the alleged misconduct of a CAFCASS Officer who was subject to complaints that he had inappropriately criticised CAFCASS on an internet discussion forum. None of the conduct was found to amount to misconduct as alleged, but CAFCASS did not get off quite so lightly. The [...]

Family Advocacy Scheme Looms

The new FAS is rushing fast towards us. The clerks have been on training. There has been a flurry of new SIP-like forms, and we will soon have to start working out quite what the new scheme will mean on a day to day basis. Yes, we should all have got to grips with this [...]

Roll up! Roll up! Join The JR!

I understand that the JR of the LSC in respect of the social welfare tender has been settled, and the Birmingham firm who brought the action have been awarded a contract. LAG News BLog covers it here. Its a shame only because I was looking forward to the judgment of Collins J – his dress rehearsal [...]

Domestic violence against men

Interesting piece in The Guardian about an analysis of publicly available stats looking at the proportion of DV perpetrated against men: in soundbite form around 40% of dv is perpetrated against men.

Official Solicitor Lack of Capacity

Called the OS helpline today for a chat with a nice lady about an issue concerning capacity. Shocked to hear they have a waiting list of 70 cases, plus ‘all the ones not yet on the waiting list’ – there’s a waiting list just to get on the waiting list! In fairness these are cases [...]