Crime and Courts Bill

Headlines : provides for creation of new single family court (a court of record) and repeal of Pt 2 CSFA 2010 (long anticipated) on privacy rules. In short this means no change to existing rules on attendance of press and reporting restrictions. Am up to my eyeballs, but you can read all abartit on Obiter [...]

STUDY DISPUTES INDEPENDENT SOCIAL WORKERS CAUSE DELAYS IN FAMILY COURTS

Some important new research is being launched today, conducted by Dr Julia Brophy at Oxford. It’s not yet visible on the Oxford website but Family Law say the following: New research published today from Oxford University claims that delays could be reduced in family courts by the earlier appointment of independent social work experts (ISWs). The [...]

Experts upon Experts

It’s been a few weeks since the Ireland report regarding expert evidence in family proceedings was published. Apologies for not getting to it before. It coincided of course with a rash of articles about George Hibbert, one such expert who is the subject of outstanding complaints and disciplinary proceedings. I wrote about the George Hibbert [...]

Litigants in Person – some numbers

A while ago I made a Freedom of Information Act request to get some stats from the court service about litigants in person in private law matters. The request and the response I received can be found here, and my summary of the figures is here. It shows the position as at end Jun 2011. [...]

Family Justice Narratives

I like the sound of my own keyboard, but recently I invited you all to share your perspective on things, to tell a story other than mine (original post here). And quite a few of you replied saying you’d like to take part. So here is how I’d like to do this. I’ve drawn up [...]

Know your limits

I was irritated on behalf of my client the other day to have spend the better part of a morning negotiating a consent order at a first hearing on a contact application in the FPC only to find we were before a legal adviser with no access to a bench who refused to make our [...]

Parental Kidnap

International child abduction is a thorny issue, particularly where a child is abducted by a parent to a country that is not a signatory to the Hague Convention. Family practitioners tend to see it from two angles – attempted prevention through the seeking of orders in the family court, and where children are abducted to [...]

And for tonight’s rant…

…I shall mostly be complaining about section 20 of the Children Act. It’s a well intentioned provision, but often exploited and misused in ways which make my blood boil. s20, for those who don’t know, is a provision which places a duty upon Local Authorities to accommodate children who have no available parent or who [...]

A Brief Adjournment

Typical. I get an invite to join the Guardian Legal Network and then I’m too too busy to post anything for like E-VAR! *teenaged eye roll* So there are a few things I’ve had my eye on but which I haven’t had time to get a post together about…And those things are these: The Family [...]

Super Supreme

Last week I had a couple of hours to kill. So I went and took a gander at the Supreme Court – and I thought it was fantastic. Entering the court was like entering the lobby of a posh hotel – I was greeted by welcoming security staff with a “Good Morning Madam”, and was [...]