Interesting piece in the Guardian about the alleged demise of court reporting generally given the collapse of the print media industry, and how a dearth of reporters reporting might militate against ‘Open Justice’. I would add that the prospect of having to pay for content might negatively affect reports reaching the general public.

Such is our concern at Family Court Support we are actively considering paying journos to attend family court hearings. More to follow on that one anon., and any journos out there who want to offer their services commercially feel free to email us at help@mckenziefriend.com

Potential solution…send in the bloggers …send in the journalism students….and the law students, and the media students… and the in-house reporters. Oh, and let the public in if they want to come in, like they already do in Scotland where private law child cases under the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 are heard in public, have public judgments given, and don’t require anonymisation or impose reporting restrictions.

The state should stop supporting  and propagating  the falsehood that the current exclusionary system is about protecting children, as it’s a complete canard. In a way it is akin to senior judges, their family members and/or acquaintances being Lloyd’s ‘Names’ while their brother lawyers supposedly close the ‘floodgates’ in ‘nervous shock’ cases. Specious, fooling only the foolish and those who don’t have scepticism as a shield.

Relax the rules to ensure that come what may, court reporting continues, even if some of what is written is raw and difficult to digest at first and seems far from impartial. And while we are at it, make the court tapes available to interested parties for all hearings. Why not?  If there is nothing to hide what is the problem in doing that?

The lamentable reality is that individual judges, expert witnesses, lawyers, CAFCASS and Social Services staff have something to hide as some are unconsciously incompetent, and others who may or may not suffer under a similar disability scrum behind them. Some individuals are on such a power trip, especially judges, expert witnesses, CAFCASS and Social Workers, probably because they wield discretionary power over parents and children, and don’t brook criticism well.  Allowing people to complain about the other side’s lawyers would help, as would complaints being adjudicated on by anyone apart from other vocational lawyers. Having said that, the conduct of some vocational lawyers is merely a boil that needs lancing on a terminally ill patient.

As someone who has the advantage of assisting throughout England and Wales and Northern Ireland I feel in an almost unique position to announce that the extremely dated Children Act (Children Order in  NI) is at the heart of the problems around Contact and Residence, and needs root and branch reform to take account of the changed societal landscape. Grandparents needs rights, non resident parents need rights instead of higher and smaller hoops to secure a relationship with their children. Resident parents need to be able to petition the court for contact orders to be adhered to by the non resident parent.  Allegation’s of themselves shouldn’t stop the contact clock. Stop allowing British and Northern Irish children to be taken away from their family, friends and schools when one of their paretns wants to leave the jurisdiction.  Let one of their parents go if they wish, but let the children stay in the UK. A Rebuttable presumption of shared residence.  Fact finding hearings to happen in all cases within 8 weeks of proceedings commencing. Perjury needs to be a strict liability offence in family courts, not virtually ignored as at present.The judge should see the litigants in the presence of their lawyers and give them a stern agreed direction about perjury. I am sure you can add your own suggestions as these are only from our cases in the last few weeks.

Something radical has to be done quickly before more children lose a relationship with their families. and any attempt at incremental reform of the Children Act and its progeny is going to leave the system open to stinging criticism, likely demoralise those involved and needlessly drain the public purse.

Haven’t seen this confirmed from any Government source but the ultra reliable Pink Tape blog broke this story yesterday.

Of course this JR will be unsuccessful, given how administrative law works.

One thing the lawyers need to look at is how many CAFCASS people are salaried and how many are self employed? I find little in the way of business sense of any self employed people being used to provide similar services to salaried staff. That is a systemic flaw if every there was one!

The ‘No Delay’ principle has only ever been aspirational, but delay could be greatly reduced if fact finding hearings were held within 6 weeks. That doesn’t require any CAFCASS input so lets be creative here and start expediting fact finding hearings! Remember where you heard it first!

In all seriousness, some CAFCASS regions have been slaughtered by OFSTED, and the processes get tinkered with, but the people remain, as does the ‘culture’. Rudeness, lack of anything resembling continuous professional development, unwillingness to allow interviews to be recorded, lack of anything approaching reasoning skills, cognitive bias, gender bias, reliance on outdated research and a general inability to stop lionizing mothers and demonizing fathers. The sooner GB has an Equality Commission and Equality Laws such as Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 the better as there is little in the way of any redress for men under CAFCASS’ complaints procedure.

From the comments to this post in the Pink Tape blog I would love to know where you guys and girls are getting all these super CAFCASS officers? I imagine you must be all acting for mums!

Jordan’s family law Newswatch have this story, which represents the current position of the Legal Services Commission.

Judges are right to be seeking to reduce delay in contact and residence cases as the delay damages the child’s relationship  with the parent that they aren’t getting to see. Judge’s are only experts in law, so they cant be expected to provide the analysis that up until then has been provided by someone with a crap degree or a diploma who got fed up working in a factory and went into social care a supposed expert in child care.

In reality the position taken by LSC is unsustainable in the medium to long term and is likely a cry for more money or a tweak to either legislation or convention/protocols. Likely to be be met with some sympathy by government.

I hate to break it to all our readers but ISW’s do not give good value for public monies in these circumstances and this should not become the norm.  One danger is that they become more ‘dependent’ and less ‘independent’ when carrying out their job of interviewing and reporting and the confirmation bias of their paymasters begins to show. Mini-me hired guns are still hired guns!

What is ironic about this story is that given the number of CAFCASS reporters who are self employed some of them will find richer pickings by working purely in the commercial sector, thus reducing the ability of CAFCASS to ASS-ist!

The well known DJ (not the musical ‘DJ’ of course, but ‘District Judge’(Magistrates Court)) Nicholas (Nick) Crichton has written an article for The Barrister magazine here. Nick is a District Judge at the Inner London Family Proceedings Court and has many years of experience handling care proceedings. I can’t ever recall appearing in front of him so can’t add anything personal to the publicly available information. Perhaps some of our readers can???

Seems like there is quite a discourse going on around ‘Enhancing the Participation of Children in Family Proceedings’ that allegedly started in earnest from a debate on the issue at Inner Temple on 20 October 2008.  Notables in attendance included Mr Justice (Sir Mark) Hedley, Mr Justice (Sir Andrew) McFarlane, Anthony Douglas (Chief Executive of CAFCASS), Anthony Hayden QC, Alison Paddle (Former Chair of NAGALRO), Lucy Theis QC (Chair of the Family Law Bar Association), Paul Carr (District Judge), Dr Barbara Mitchels (family solicitor,mediator and psychotherapist) and Dr Danya Glaser (consultant child psychiatrist. I notice that no-one from Families need Fathers was listed but perhaps the list was just the panel members, and not the attendees? Podcast here and abridged transcript here. I note the podcast is hosted by AmazonPR who list both Families need Fathers, the Family Justice Council and Ministry of Justice as recent clients .

Addressing the meeting were two people from the CAFCASS Young People’s Board.

As an aside I wonder how many young people on the board have been prevented from seeing their parents or their extended family, or who have been royally let down by CAFCASS?  I will formally ask that question of Kathryn Grant of CAFCASS and will copy the response to the blog if any arrives. Regardless of the response lets make sure that some young people who have not had their voice heard, or had their voice heard but ignored are on the CAFCASS Young People’s Board. Speak to your children and ask them whether they would like to become involved to ensure a broad view of children’s experiences are included. Not advisable when proceedings are still ongoing…

A job description, application form and recruitment poster are all accessible from this page. Date for applications says 25th July, and not surprisingly for overworked CAFCASS there is no year included.! No doubt that will change unannounced after this post! Even if the date was 2009, let’s ensure that applications come in to ensure this board is representative. All it takes is a few extra chairs Anthony and just think of all the PR you can get from being more inclusive !

I will comment in detail on the subject matter of the consultation anon, so subscribe to the RSS feed or keep checking back to the blog for that.

PS If you read this don’t forget to fill in the poll about Who Submitted Wikipedia as Evidence . Can’t say any more on the poll without making it like one of those easy-peasy ‘This Morning’ quiz phone in questions…