As what we’re calling a grizzly year comes to a close, we wanted to take a moment to wish all of our readers a merry Christmas, and hope you find some joy in the festive season despite the many heavy hearts we know mothers, fathers and children will be carrying this year as they find themselves separated from one another.

We are going to take a short break until the New Year, but we will be back in full force in 2021, shining a light on the challenges and injustices inside the family courts.

We will also continue to share information to help you secure your rights and the rights of your children, and to assist in reuniting families wherever and whenever possible.

Our readers will know that as a project we are dedicated to placing the rights of every child at the heart of the family justice system, while holding government to account to ensure that bad policies and laws affecting children are highlighted and changed.

At this time of the year, our mission is much smaller, but no less important. We choose to remember, and honour, the thousands of parents and family members whose worlds have been torn apart by the removal of a child. This project is and always will be, for you, with our focus on every child who needs us.

We wish you a restful and hopeful festive season, and may 2021 bring about changes our children would be proud of.

With love,

Researching Reform

The latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

• Holyrood committee calls for scope of UNCRC bill to be widened – politicians say bill should be extended to allow children to sue private sector and voluntary organisations who deliver public services (Scotland)
• Alert levels and restrictions in Wales: children’s rights – Impact assessment (Wales)
• Coronavirus: Separated Families & Contact with Children in Care FAQs – Latest update (England and Wales)

Findings from a survey produced by King’s College London of more than 500 professionals and parents found that while almost 50% of child welfare professionals preferred virtual hearings, all of the parents polled said they preferred physical meetings.

The research was gathered by the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory, and published on 14 December. Of the total people polled, 492 were child welfare professionals, with just 24 respondents being parents.

Key findings from the report include:

• Three quarters of parents thought the way the conference had been conducted had adversely affected their ability to contribute;
• Just over half felt they had been able to express their views and comment on what was being said, while the remainder of parents polled believed they had been denied that opportunity or were not able to comment;
• Nearly half of professionals thought that a virtual model for conferences was better than being in the same room as it enabled a wider range of professionals to attend and;
• Some professionals reported better engagement with children, particularly older children, in remote conferences, and also that remote conferences could be less intimidating for parents.

Findings echo existing research in this area, which highlight ongoing barriers for vulnerable parents, particularly those with learning complexities, and outline the current tensions between the need for robust support and tech benefits that arise for professionals looking to cut through their case loads.

As is often the way though, this is, for the moment at least, a case of more haste less speed – and a dose of law breaking thrown in.

And these hearings are breaking the law. A previous report published by the Nuffield Foundation found that mothers were having their children removed from them shortly after birth, through telephone hearings and sometimes without the mother present.

That particular survey, which gathered the views of 1,300 individuals did not include a significant amount of family feedback – only 10% of respondents were parents and family members.

The research also found that 40% of parents did not understand what was happening during their remote hearings, while 66% said their cases had not been dealt with well through the online hearing process. Only 12% of parents and relatives polled said they had no concerns about their remote hearing.

The findings of that survey led to a call to ban telephone hearings by family support group, the Parent, Family and Allies Network (PFAN).

And all of this is happening while government policy continues to allow Covid-safe, face-to-face contact.

Virtual family court hearings are also posing challenges for journalists. A recent case involving Haringey Council and PA Media Group caught the media’s attention after details of the council’s shocking child protection failings were revealed, but what has since come to light thanks to this case, is that the media are not being notified of hearings being held remotely.

When Researching Reform wrote about this development in June, we urged the President of the Family Division to explore this phenomenon, and address it.

The lack of family engagement in these research projects is also concerning. We encourage research bodies to find holistic ways to increase parent and family member engagement in this kind of data collection, otherwise, it is almost useless.

Additional Links:

• New research raises concerns about experiences of parents and families in newly ‘virtual’ child protection conferences – 14th Dec 2020
• Remote family court hearings are breaking the law – there is a better way (October 2020)
• What Are Remote Family Court Hearings Really Like For Parents? – Voice of the Child Podcast (May 2020)
• PA Media Group v London Borough of Haringey & Others [2020] EWHC 1282 (Fam) (May 2020)

The latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

• Children central to technology-facilitated abuse in domestic violence cases
• Parents whose 4-y-o was wrongfully taken by CPS officially removed from Child Abuse Registry
• Stormont ‘failing children and young people’, law centre warns

A few very interesting publications have popped up, so while we were initially going to write a post about one of them today, we have decided to share all three at once, instead.

The rights of children and young people as family members of prisoners, and as prisoners with family members

Oxford University’s law department website has a good blog post on the topic of children’s rights in relation to imprisoned family members, and their rights as prisoners themselves. The post is a summary of a conference given by Scottish charity Families Outside, and is written by Kirsty Deacon, a post doctoral researcher at the University of Strathclyde. The piece is packed with useful links and the names of organisation offering help and support in this area.

You can access the blog post here.

Coronavirus: Separated Families and Contact with Children in Care FAQs (UK)

By far our favourite government-commissioned series at the moment, the House of Commons Library team’s publications on what the law and policy are for children and families experiencing separation should be core reading for anyone working with families in social care. This latest update offers some interesting reminders, including a good summary of what happens when one parent withholds contact, which now advises that anyone seeking to breach a child contact order on “reasonable excuse” grounds should get legal advice before doing so.

You can access the latest briefing here.

HMCTS event on digital family public law service

An online event launched on 4 November by the courts and tribunals service to update the public on the family courts’ reform programme has been recorded and made available to view. The dedicated page for the event on the Gov. website also includes a PDF summary of the Q&A session. The blurb on the page says, “This event provided detail around the digital service for family public law professionals; explaining how the service works, how to subscribe and how it can help local authorities and legal professionals involved in care and supervision proceedings.”

You can watch the session and read the document here.

The child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

• Home Office Report: Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation Characteristics of Offending
• Scotland charity alliance calls for ending compulsory religious observance in schools
• Nine more Nightingale courtrooms to be delivered

Welcome to another week.

As the government appears to be preparing for the all-out review of children’s social care it promised, views from key stakeholders, and some children, about what the review should focus on are starting to make their way online.

Our question this week then, is just this: what would you like the review to focus on?

The Family Justice Board (FJB) has set out a list of priorities for the family courts it intends to fulfil in response to the challenges raised by the pandemic and long-term reform needs.

In a statement issued yesterday, the FJB said increasing efficiency would be at the forefront of its efforts to improve private family law (divorce and child contact) proceedings, while urgent child protection cases in public family law would be heard in a timely manner through the courts.

The priorities have been explained fully in two documents, one for public family law matters and one for private family law matters, and have been added to the statement’s website page.

Members of the FJB include parliamentary under secretaries of state at the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Education (as co-chairs); the chief executives of Cafcass and Cafcass Cymru, and representatives for Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service and various other public organisations. The President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, sits on the Family Justice Board as an observer, as does a representative from the Family Justice Young People’s Board.

Many thanks to LexisNexis for offering an excellent summary of the statement.

You can access the statement and the additional documents here.

The latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

• UEFA and Terre Des Homes launch safeguarding platform for children in football
• Half a million children in extreme hardship across UK – even before lockdown
• Denmark apologises to children taken from Greenland in a 1950s social experiment

A consultation published by the Children’s Commissioner on 7 December looks at some of the experiences children in care have had, and outlines improvements those children would like to see inside the care system.

The organisation carried out the consultation in response to the Conservative government’s pledge to launch a complete review of the care system, during the last general election.

The consultation asked children what the system was ‘doing right’ and what needed to change, and identified eight central themes which emerged from interviews carried out with care experienced children.

Those themes were carers, family, professionals, support, freedom, choice, stability and attitudes. Positive experiences have been published in blue, while negative experiences have been highlighted in red.

The 19 page document does not really offer anything new, but serves as a good reminder to the government that children in care have very clearly defined needs, which are required in law to be met, both from a developmental and human rights-driven perspective.

The publication includes a significant number of quotes from children, including the desire to be able to choose their social workers and have more control over how their private data is shared. These are two very important points which touch upon several areas in children’s social care, not least of all the ongoing breaches of privacy they suffer during the ‘advertising process’ where children’s names and locations are shared online for the world to see, in order to match them with carers.

There are some important observations about the way the system matches carers to children, too, such as the concern that very little effort appears to be made when carers are allocated children, leaving children feeling as if a robot has managed the process. This is of course, completely unacceptable.

One child also asked to have in-depth information about the carers they are sent to live with, much in the same way carers get information packs about the children. Researching Reform thinks this is an excellent idea.

Another child describes being ‘lucky’, because he or she only had to move from a placement once. That quote, which was placed in the ‘positive’ section (blue text) of the report, is telling, and deeply embarrassing for all key stakeholders inside the system, highlighting as it does the poor levels of care these children are experiencing.

This report is a must-read for anyone working inside the care system, as the quotes shared by the children shine a powerful, and very precise light on what needs to change.

You can access the document here.