complete with pinstripes, pink tape and post its

2 years ago things were a lot different: for family law; for me. The ‘Secret courts’ were all the talk – now we have open justice, perhaps soon to be open reporting. The Baby P scandal had yet to break – now we have social work and CAFCASS collapse as a result of the fallout.

Some things were ever thus: proposals to slash legal aid for family practitioners were afoot, there were hotspots of CAFCASS delay and the bar had not really found its way to the blogosphere (perish the thought of embracing technology).

At home, I was just pregnant (or just about to be).  And working in London. And whilst my short period of maternity leave was perfect opportunity for blogging about the job I was taking a pause from, the return to work in Bristol coupled with the ever increasing mobility and ever increasing volume levels of a 15 month old present an ever increasing challenge to making time in my life for the blog (both this one and the Family Law Week blog).

To those who poo-pooed the idea and to my nameless but very learned friend who suggested it was downright unprofessional and demeaning for a member of the bar to be involved with such trash as a blog, 3000 hits a month respectfully submit that you were wrong and that there is something of value in between Heat Magazine (to which you compared this blog) and a legal looseleaf. Clever is good. Clever and interesting is better. And successful is good. But successful and happy is better.

But enough of bitching about the past (although I do feel better for having got that off my chest), what is the future for Pink Tape? Well, I’m always happy to hear suggestions for the direction of the blog, you may like to comment on this post. But in general terms: here’s to another two years at least. It may not go on for ever, but I think I have a clue who may be inheriting the Pink Tape mantle when I hang up my keyboard and blog my last…as you can see from the picture he is earnestly in training already.

.

These charts may seem trivial but they are important – because they form the cornerstone of health visitor intervention in the early months. This helpful document explains why the new charts are different and better.

• ‘homebuyers returning to the market’- first time buyers apparently are out in force trying to bag a bargain, but of course a large number of them are likely to find it difficult to raise funds unless they have a hefty deposit.
• ‘police deal with 20,000 child sex crimes a year’ – reported as if allegations equal crime, apparently one in four of this large number involved children 4 and under. I wonder what proportion result in a conviction?
• ‘Deaths of 8 children ‘are a scandal” – yet another local authority, this time Birmingham, has been accused of a systematic failure identified after 8 children known to Birmingham social services died of suspected abuse or neglect.
• ‘few ‘good’ reasons to force births’ – unsurprising story about the overuse of induction on pregnant women, 28% of which were not done for a medical reason. Gosh the medical profession do know how to disempower us and make us feel incapable of doing anything by ourselves…we’ve only been doing it for thousands of years.
• Finally, ‘big rise in racial mix families’ – one in ten children in Britain lives in a racially mixed family. Almost half of black caribbean men are in a mixed-race relationship, but only eight percent of men with a pakistani background according to the EHRC – I’d be interested to read a cultural exploration of the differences in mixing as between different communities.

Well, that kept me occupied on the train into chambers…

As yesterday’s OFSTED report apparently tells us (I say apparently because I haven’t had time to read it, and because frankly it’s not news to me) this kind of tragedy is going on all over the country. Sadly many kids are killed by their carers, and no doubt sometimes this could have been prevented. But as the slathering media machine churns on and on  I am beginning to feel a little bit like the gawping at the spectacle of Baby P is not only unhealthy in itself but a little bit disrespectful to all those other forgotten babies and children. I’m afraid what is being reported as ‘shocking’ to many of us is probably ‘normal’ for many many unhappy children.

P.S. Is this where the phrase ‘Guest parent’ has suddenly sprung from? I’ve certainly heard IDS on the radio this week opining about the state of society viz a viz Baby P and I think he is the one to have coined this new buzzword.

.

I had understood that one of the barristers being followed was a family barrister, perhaps he or she will make an appearance in later episodes along with a bit more reality tv (I mean that literally not pejoratively) and a bit less confirming of stereotypes.

.

Notwithstanding all the mildly amusing stories it wasn’t exactly an exciting piece of telly, but don’t let that dissuade you from watching future episodes – we are really not as dull as you might think from part 1 and I think it will get better….

. 

It’s really quite interesting (depressing?) looking at the comments on the At Bristol report of this story to see how people articulate their very different views about these things. There seems to be no community consensus about what is or is not racist and what is or is not acceptable or lawful, and no common language through which to discuss these issues. My two penn’orth: one can make an unacceptable or discriminatory comment without intending to. Identifying a ‘racist’ is more complicated than simply saying anyone who has ever acted in a discriminatory way or who has upset someone by a remark pertaining to race is de facto ‘a racist’. If you’ll excuse the pun (I can’t think of a metaphor which doesn’t involve one) it’s not a black and white issue, but a spectrum. I would hazard that all of us have said or done something that might be reasonably called ‘discriminatory’ or which may have offended someone (most of us hopefully inadvertently) but I don’t think we are all racists. Language is complicated and we don’t always wield it well.

.

Racism is not necessarily the same as discrimination which has a specific legal meaning (treating someone less favourably on grounds of race / sex etc) and which, as defined, is outlawed. We mustn’t forget that what Sam Mason was doing was inciting a taxi firm to discriminate unlawfully against its asian members of staff. Private hire taxi drivers are usually self employed and get paid by the job so this is not a victimless ‘crime’. It is no different from a client who asks for a female barrister or a black barrister (for whatever reason), or a white patient who asks for a white nurse (for an employee there may be no financial harm but a clear humiliation) – it’s unlawful and it’s unfair. Protecting your daughter’s oh-so-delicate sensibilities is no excuse.

.

What I don’t understand about this episode is why a fourteen year old girl living in a mixed city like Bristol would be ‘freaked out’ by a turban in the first place, unless she is picking up on attitudes or anxieties prevalent at home, or possibly at school. Need it be said that an asian man (with or without turban) is not inherently frightening – it is learnt behaviour. Wherever it has come from, closeting a child in some kind of weird turban-free world is only going to compound that anxiety – it says to the child that it’s normal to be freaked out by an asian man. And I think it’s that short-sighted parenting that bothers me most about this. I would not expect most open-minded parents striving to bring up well-rounded and culturally sensitive children to consider that requesting a white female taxi driver would be a helpful response to a teenager’s anxiety or potential anxiety about the unfamiliar. A better approach surely would be to not let it be a big deal and to just expect them to get over it.  

.

There is a lot of overreaction about this story, but I have some considerable sympathy with the BBC for taking the decision that they did. I also have considerable sympathy with Sam Mason – what enormous consequences for simply trying to ensure your child’s wellbeing, well-intentioned if misguided. Having read about her difficult past few years I hope this is not something which reverberates too far in her life and I hope that people will let her reflect, learn and move on without consigning her forever to the ‘racist’ bin. There are worse people out there.

.

I don’t know what the true facts are - and in point of fact neither does Camilla Cavendish. And although this unverifiability is itself one of the points the article is seeking to highlight – is it responsible journalism when emotive stories of this kind are presented as factual reporting when the sole source of information is the individual most likely to see things in a highly subjective way – the parent whose child has been removed against their wishes?

.

On a more general level I recognise many of the accounts contained in this article as very similar to cases I have dealt with – Cavendish is right that often victims of domestic violence find their ex-partners attempting (successfully) to maintain their control over them through court proceedings. (As an aside I am however amazed to read of a Judge ordering disclosure of the address of a refuge to a father - it is commonplace for women to withold the child’s address from the abusive ex but for the court to keep a confidential record of that address on the court file not to be disclosed to the abusive parent. This is usually so even though allegations of violence are unproven. Given that the refuge were almost certainly not directly invovled in the the court proceedings I think it is more likely that there has been an element of misreporting down the chain here and that in fact court staff have wrongly disclosed an address held in this way than that a Judge directly ordered that disclosure.)

.

I agree that the ongoing controlling or abusive behaviour of ex-partners through court proceedings or contact can be very difficult for victims of abusive relationships to deal with, and it can make them unwell or can make an already difficult fresh start even more so – but how can Camilla Cavendish justify her sweeping assertion at the conclusion of her article that ‘too often, power seems to tip the wrong way. The abusive partner gets custody. The innocent new father loses his child…’ Whilst one case of injustice is one too many, the clear insinuation is that these cases occur with frequency. And although that could be correct I do not think that there is an evidential basis for asserting this in the national press. It may be frustrating for a journalist not to be able to get behind the inital report by a parent and to fully establish the veracity of an account, but hey, that’s journalism and its the way things are at the moment. Cavendish is shortlisted for an award for Campaigning Journalism: I’m not a journalist myself, but it seems to me that her key campaigning tactic in demonstrating the need for an opening up of the family justice system is the reporting uncorroborated and contentious information that would not be considered sufficiently robust under normal journalistic standards.

.

I say this primarily because I would guess that the overwhelming majority of parents who have had their children removed by the courts or social services (to the other parent or to care) will consider that decision to have been wrong and unjust. Some of them I am sure will be rightly aggrieved. However it is sadly the case that many of them will be in denial, unable to see or to accept the whole picture. Examples of the ‘right’ decision being made are going to appear few and far between to Ms Cavendish when the only source of stories is a group of people who are very naturally going to feel deeply wronged regardless of the reality. And the more aggrieved a parent is the more likely they are to gravitate towards a journalist campaigning for family justice. It is Tim Yeo MP’s duty to his consituents to give them the benefit of the doubt when trying to assist them in that role, but a journalist’s responsibility is to the pursuit of truth. 

.

There ARE cases where real injustice is done. They should be exposed and righted. But not in this manner. The premise behind The Times Family Justice Campaign for greater openness is valid. However I find it increasingly troublesome that the fact that journalists can’t get access to the information at present somehow translates into carte blanche to print any account of injustice that comes their way. The repeated appearance of uncorroborated hearsay in the press in this way in unhelpful and I think it erodes the public’s confidence in the Family Justice system. It is corrosive and it contributes to a deep distrust and suspicion of the authorities which is damaging for everyone involved in court cases, particularly care cases (including the children). It often contributes to a parent’s inability to work constructively with professionals (which can be their downfall in care cases).

.

The sooner that the Family Justice System is opened up for scrutiny the better – whilst I do not expect the press to be interested in reporting the cases where things actually work as they ought, at least the press will be provided with the information resources to do a proper and balanced reporting job, and will no longer have an excuse for printing potentially misleading information about matters of public interest.

POSTSCRIPT 6 NOV:

Camilla Cavendish has been announced as the joint winner of the Paul Foot Award for Campaigning Journalism. See here. According to one of the Judges: ‘There is a frighteningly strong lobby against openness. It includes lawyers, judges, doctors and charity workers who seem to genuinely believe that protecting inadequate public servants from scrutiny is somehow in the best interests of children’. I’m not sure that such a sweeping misrepresentation of the motivation of the many professionals involved in child protection work deserves any substantive response.

.

But the scariest part was this quote from Bob Quick, head of Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command, who said the ruling was “catastrophic”: “There is too much principle and not enough pragmatism in the criminal justice system,” he said.  

.

Yikes – when up on a murder charge I jolly well hope to be tried according to principle not pragmatism, but at least its not someone in a position of leadership or authority in the police speaking with such disregard for the importance of a robustly fair trial system …

.

NB: I have no plans to be up on a murder charge in the near future.

.

Read the quote in its original context here.