A bill designed to amplify children’s wishes and feelings in family cases, and offer more protections for child and adult victims from domestic abuse came into force in Scotland on 2 October, 2020.
The Scottish government’s website says the Children’s Act aims to do the following:
- ensure the views of the child are heard in contact and residence cases;
- further protect victims of domestic abuse and their children;
- ensure the best interests of the child are at the centre of contact and residence cases and Children’s Hearings; and
- further compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in family court cases.
Key measures in the Act enhance young children’s right to be heard in family cases and places more responsibility on child welfare professionals to incorporate the views of every adult who has parental responsibility for a child, including parents with children in care.
The new legislation ensures that verbal children of all ages are able to express their views in any way they feel most comfortable, and that decisions made by a judge which impact children are explained to them clearly, through the use of appropriate language.
Ash Denham, the Minister of Community Safety (SNP) said last week, “The presumption that a child aged 12 or over is mature enough to give their views has been replaced with a presumption that, subject to extremely limited exceptions, all children are capable of giving their views. In addition, under the bill, the courts will be required to provide children with an explanation of their decisions. The courts will also be required to seek the views of children if an order has not been complied with. Those are radical changes that will make the process more child friendly.”
Judges will be required to engage with children’s views about their cases, so that the courts can make more informed and honest decisions. The requirement to explain their decisions to the children that come before them has been added to ensure that children understand what has been decided on their behalf.
This Act is not groundbreaking, but it does acknowledge that decisions about children need their input in order to be able to truly understand their needs, and how best to protect and support them.
Researching Reform 
“This Act is not groundbreaking, but it does acknowledge that decisions about children need their input in order to be able to truly understand their needs, and how best to protect and support them.”
I would argue that such an Act doesn’t so much “acknowledge” any supposed “need” for children’s “input” in order for the court to become able to understand their needs “truly” and to discover how “best” to protect the children. Rather, it succumbs to the *doctrine* of a certain school of thought that children always, somehow know best what their true needs are and that the best way of protecting them is therefore for the court to “support” them, by giving them whatever the more dominant parent is able to manipulate each child into saying he or she wants, rather than protecting children from such manipulation by eliminating the present incentive for abusive parents to dominate their children (and, often, also to dominate the co-parents from whom they alienate the children).
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I agree with much of the opinions voiced by Mr. Allman. It’s a two-edged sword. Children under 12 are far more likely to voice an opinion given to them by the resident parent, as they have to live with them! This preoccupation with ‘hearing the voice of the child’ seems to be akin to putting an old head on young shoulders. More helpful, I think, to obtain the opinion of, say, teachers, who have daily contact with the child or children and should have a relatively unbiased view.
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HRA1998 Art 8 makes clear a person has a right to chose their own relationships. Unless courts introduce due diligence to ensure that the voice of a child is their own, how can they be sure there is not a breach. Courts have a duty to be alert to any breach and act proactively when it is happening. As far as my experience goes, my child said he wanted 50:50 but lost a night with me thanks to corrupt CAFCASS, it is therefore clear the system is designed to create family alienation as was witnessed in Germany in 1930’s for example. Family courts are currently not fit for purpose, not sure they ever were, or ever will be.
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@Roger Crawford
Your proposal of consulting teachers instead of the children themselves could make matters even worse. Instead of only being under pressure in the run-up to a court appearance, the child could find himself or herself under constant pressure at home, lest, out of the blue, a schoolteacher starts a conversation with him or her about his or her wishes and feelings concerning his or her residence with or contact with his or her two parents. Why should schoolteachers take it upon themselves to start such conversations? (They never did when I was at primary school and would likely have received short shrift from us if they’d tried.) School may be a suffering child’s only respite or distraction from a life in which, at all other times, he or she is primed and manipulated relentlessly to have the wishes and feelings that one or both of his or her parents want him or her to express if asked.
How would your well-meaning alternative suggestion work in the case of a child who is home-schooled by a resident parent bent on alienating him or her from his non-resident parent, with whom latter he or she has no contact whatsoever?
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It wouldn’t work, would it? I’m floored on that one, but teachers are sometimes asked to keep an eye on children that are deemed ‘at risk’, and often if a child is denied a meaningful relationship with a parent after having had one, that child will show signs of distress, loss and/or bewilderment. Teachers and teaching assistants are in a good place to notice these things. I ran a youth club many years ago, and although the members were generally in their teens, if there was trouble at home they would show signs. I would, if I was concerned, take them aside and gently ask them if they were in trouble and usually – not always – they were grateful that I’d noticed and wanted to talk. Granted, occasionally I’d be told to F*** off!
I can only speak from my own experiences, and one who has lost all contact with my only child through Parental Alienation.
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@Roger Crawford
I am sorry to learn that you have lost all contact with your only child. You are in an even worse situation than I am, although I suspect my son is in a worse situation than your child.
During the period 2013 thru 2016, my younger son, who is my fifth and youngest child, to all practical intents and purposes lost all meaningful contact with his father, his three sisters and a brother, his four uncles (two on his mother’s side) and three aunts, his eight nephews and nieces and more first cousins than I can count (four on his mother’s side). As far as I know and in all likelihood as best as I can guess, the only other person on the planet with whom he has any character-building contact at all since 2016 has been his mother, who has fallen out with every other member of his large extended family apart from his maternal grandmother, who died
The only relative he has with any power over him and all the others in his family concerned for his safety and welfare, is his mother, who I expect is still immersed in her paranoid belief system.
This is not the place to discuss our own misfortunes and those of our children though. Feel free to contact me privately, using my contact details, which are on my blog, which you may find worth reading and following. We could encourage one another, potentially benefiting our lost children.
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I’m sorry Mr. Allman, that I haven’t responded sooner. I’m a total numpty with computers, and also in the throes of moving house. I haven’t seen my daughter for over fourteen years and that was in Court, and she’ll be twenty eight now! I have come to terms with the fact I’ll probably never see her again (I’m 72). I’ve learned not to dwell on it and am fortunate in having a happy marriage, good health (so far!) and lots of interests and I’m not prone to depression. Always willing to discuss things, and I give Natasha permission to give you my E-mail address if you’d like.
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If you just email me, I won’t need Natasha to give me your email address. Mine’s findable.
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Teachers are just as likely to be as biased as either parent. One step forward maybe to PARENT-UP. I understand (correct me if I am wrong) a child can have 6 adults with PR. As well as god-parents, when a child is born parents should recruit 4 more adults and give then PR. These adults may be friends but don’t have to be. Four impartial and child focused adults can not only get the child’s voice’s heard, but act as a barrier to ‘Sadistic Services’ stealing children, and also intervene if substance abuse an issue, or similar setbacks that befall families. It may take 10 years to kick in but the less government in children’s lives can only be good for society.
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My grandchildren who were stolen were only 1&2 years old when taken nearly 3 years old and the third was taken from birth and has turned 1 last month.
What about children that have no voice like my grandchildren?they are babies.
What chance have they got?
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In the current environment, none. Our children have been stolen on a regular basis for 50+ years now. A suitable remedy will take time to kick in. Hopefully by educating young people to the dangers and risked posed by those in positions of power, rather than propogandising marriage into a fantasy world can we start to make a change. People need to build the defences again, like the protections we had. Working people suffer mostly from the unstructured and uninformed pathway into relationships. Never give up nor cease from mental fight.
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The Family Courts use Civil Law. We should never have allowed these continental versions of courts to have developed in England. Common Law courts where Juries sit in such cases need to be brought back. Texas still uses Common Law courts and juries in family matters.
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Where did you get the idea from that the “Civil Law” in England, complete with its sometimes problematic “balance of probabilities” standard of proof and its scant reliance upon juries nowadays (whatever they still do in Texas) was an import from the mainland of Europe that occurred after the American Revolution allowing British and American jurisprudence to go their separate ways? I don’t deny that family courts in Texas might be making better decisions that British family courts, or even that anarchy might produce happier and more just outcomes for the children of couples who don’t stay together both in Texas and in the UK. I am only interrogating your explanation as to why the present fiasco is best understood as you explain it.
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