The President of the Family Division, Andrew McFarlane said journalists and bloggers should have greater access to family court hearings and court documents in a report on transparency in family proceedings published today.

McFarlane said parents and family members should also have more freedoms to contact journalists about important and concerning cases.

In a statement on the judiciary’s website, he said the current reporting process was not sustainable and that there needed to be  “a major shift in culture and process to increase the transparency”. He said the report’s aim was to balance two key issues: developing public confidence in the Family Justice system while maintaining the anonymity of families and children inside the system.

McFarlane now hopes to pilot a new reporting system in family courts around the country.

Researching Reform welcomes this report and the team behind it who are enabling the development of a more humane and sophisticated family court system for children and their parents.

And hats off to McFarlane, for this brave and insightful report.

You can read the President’s statement here.

You can access the report here.

Many thanks to Dana for alerting us to the publication of the report.

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

• Legislating to end the forced removals of First Nations children in New South Wales (Australia)
• Sweden launches adoptions inquiry after kidnapping reports
• My family and the scars of forced adoption (UK)

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

• New Ombudsman children and education complaint decisions
• Government responds to Education Committee report on disadvantaged White pupils
• WEBINAR: Why are more older children and young people entering care proceedings?

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

• Conference: Care Review panel discussion TODAY on the stigma of care experience (sign up here)
• Article: Call for addiction services in new family court system (Ireland)
• TV: Growing Up Poor: Hidden Homeless (Channel 4 Dispatches, England)

A thought-provoking article in the Regulatory Review argues that the US’s child welfare state should be abolished, and replaced with a system that does not police, or discriminate against families.

The opinion piece has been written by Robyn M. Powell, a visiting assistant professor at Stetson University College of Law.

Powell argues that it is not enough to reform a system within its existing framework, and that in order to bring about meaningful change, the system’s laws and policies must be reviewed, removed where necessary and replaced with better laws which do not enable discrimination or injustice.

In the article she quotes a pioneering legal expert, professor Dorothy Roberts, who said that the United States must “finally abolish what we now call child protection and replace it with a system that really promotes children’s welfare.”

Powell also makes the following observations in her piece, which focuses on children and parents with disabilities and their representation inside social care:

“Each year, the child welfare system traumatizes and separates millions of marginalized families, including parents with disabilities and their children. Indeed, in 2019, the child welfare system investigated more than 3 million families and separated approximately 430,000 children from their parents.

Notably, two-thirds of the cases in which children were separated from their parents involved allegations of neglect, not abuse, which is often conflated with poverty. Thus, most of these families could have been spared child welfare system involvement if they had access to adequate supports and resources.

The disproportionate rate of child welfare system involvement in families headed by parents with disabilities is striking. Although children of parents with disabilities comprise only 9 percent of the nation’s youth, they make up 19 percent of the children in foster care.”

The piece introduces Powell’s research paper, “Achieving Justice for Disabled Parents and Their Children: An Abolitionist Approach,” which offers an in-depth argument as to why the child welfare state as it is should be abolished. The research is going to be featured in the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism.

Powell’s 93 page paper is free and available to read.

As the UK’s child protection sector faces strikingly similar problems to the US’s own system, we thought this paper was important to share.

You can read Powell’s piece here.

Access Powell’s research paper here.

Welcome to another week.

These are the child welfare stories that should be right on your radar:

• UK parents trying to protect children face fines, imprisonment and safeguarding referrals as school COVID cases soar
• Over 2,000 children rescued from drug gangs in huge country-wide police operation
• Parents who are occasionally abrupt with their children may be guilty of ‘mild neglect’, NSPCC says

As part of our image of the month series, we are continuing to feature artist and adoptee Paul Brian Tovey’s deeply moving drawings.

Paul is an adult adoptee who was abused by his adoptive parents as a child, and now campaigns for adoptees to have the legal right to revert back to their birth identities.

Paul uses his art to channel and process his pain, and in doing so creates emotionally powerful canvases.

The featured image on Researching Reform’s banner is called Going Home: The Istol Fire Lion Talk.

Thank you to Paul for allowing Researching Reform to showcase his art.

A contract of expectations, which is sometimes called a partnership agreement, a working agreement, or a written agreement, is used by local authorities (LA) to monitor parents where there are child welfare concerns.

Despite the use of words like “contract” and “agreement” in these documents, parents are not legally required to agree to the contract or sign it.

The agreement itself must be written in clear language. It must outline the LA’s concerns, and it must explain what the LA would like the parents to do to address those concerns. It must also explain what the LA will do to support the parents.

These agreements should only ever be used when there are genuine child protection concerns. They should also be properly drawn up, monitored and reviewed regularly.

A properly produced written agreement will include a clause which says that the document is not legally binding. This means that if a parent signs the document and then breaches one of the terms, the LA cannot sue the parent, or take them to court to enforce the agreement.

However the LA can mention the breach in court proceedings and may do so to try to show that the parent is not working with the LA and may even try to suggest the parent is behaving dishonestly.

If you are presented with a contract of expectations you always have the right to do the following:

• To read the document in full, and in your own time without being harassed, forced or intimidated
• To call someone who can explain the document to you, or attend your property to offer you support
• To call a lawyer or advocate for legal advice about the document
• To refuse to sign the form and ask the social worker to call you the following day to arrange a meeting at an appropriate time

In the event that you become involved with social services, we would advise organising the following in advance, so that you are prepared:

• Arrange for someone to be your “Emergency Buddy” – someone who lives nearby and can come and offer you moral or practical support with a visit from social services for the purpose of getting you to sign a form (the person should be calm and polite).
• Store a list of emergency numbers on your phone for local support services – a 24 hour legal helpline for legal advice, a 24 hour support helpline for parents involved in proceedings and so on.
• If you have a lawyer already, ask them if you can call out of hours if there is an emergency.
• Use this page to get familiar with your rights: you do not have to sign a written agreement, and you do not have to agree to anything you do not understand.

Steps to take if a social worker enters your home with a view to getting you to sign a written agreement:

• Record the interaction. You can use your phone or any recording device to make an audio or video record of the event. It is good to tell the social worker you are going to do this, out of courtesy, but they cannot stop you from recording, as the law allows it.
• Explain to the social worker that you are going to call your “Emergency Buddy” or someone who has agreed to be your support in the event a social worker comes to the house with a form to sign.
• Explain to the social worker that you are also going to call a lawyer to make sure the form is proper and you understand it fully.
• Ask the social worker to wait until your Emergency Buddy has arrived/ you have had a chance to read the document, at your own pace and until you understand it fully. The social worker may offer to explain the form to you: if you are not comfortable with this offer, you can say thank you but you would rather wait for your friend or lawyer to look it over with you.
• Read the form. Check that it contains: a clause saying the form is not legally binding; an explanation from the LA about the child welfare concerns; what the LA want you to do to address those concerns; and what the LA will do to support you.
• Decide whether or not you want to sign the form. If you don’t want to sign it, you have the right not to sign.
• You can then ask the social worker to leave (politely).

If you are under 18 and social services are trying to get you to sign a written agreement, you have the right to support from a child advocate.

Written agreements do not have a good reputation, and have been criticised by social workers in the past. A Community Care Survey in 2017 found that social workers called these agreements ‘draconian’; ‘unsafe’; ‘knee jerk reaction’ and; ‘shoddy practice.’ You do not have to feel intimidated if you are presented with a contract of expectations and any social worker that presents you with one must be courteous, helpful and supportive.

Additional information:

• Parents CAN Record Child Protection Meetings
• EXCLUSIVE: Child Protection Professionals Intimidating Parents Into Signing Illegal Undertakings
• Child advocates at Coram Voice
• Child advocates at the National Youth Advocacy Service (NYAS)
• Emergency support numbers for legal assistance
• Written Agreements with Families – Guidance for Practitioners (Leeds City Council)
• Effective written agreements (OFSTED)
• Should written agreements still be a common part of child protection practice? (Community Care article, 2017)

Many thanks to Tum Mum, who alerted us to this topic.

A review of existing studies on children’s thoughts on parental separation and/or their experience of court proceedings has been collected and distilled into six key messages by the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory (NFJO).

The NFJO examined UK and international research studies from the last 20 years (2000–2020).

While the research focuses on experiences within private family law proceedings which typically involve divorce and child custody (contact) issues, the messages will resonate with children and families who have experienced public family law proceedings, which usually feature child protection, foster care and adoption hearings.

The messages outlined in the paper themselves are not controversial or unknown to child welfare advocates or court-experienced parents but they serve as a good reminder about issues that affect children in family court proceedings and the current and significant gaps in addressing those issues.

The paper’s web page says:

“The family court has a role in resolving disputes between separating parents over child arrangements—known as private law. More than twice as many private law applications are started in England and Wales each year than public law applications. Yet little is known about the children and families involved in them.”

The six key messages the NFJO pulled out from the research were:

1. Parental separation can be distressing, traumatic and confusing
2. Good communication and access to information are important
3. Being heard and understood in court can feel empowering
4. Being properly involved and consulted in decision making is important
5. Getting the right support makes a difference
6. Thoughts and feelings on contact are complex and take time to process

The paper makes the following conclusions:

“Despite the limitations, the research clearly indicates that children are actively—not passively—involved in their parents’ separation and court proceedings. Decisions made by the court have a big impact on children’s lives, and children’s experiences of being left out of decision making can increase anxiety and upset.

Across the research, there was a clear need for children to be provided with greater support and guidance to adjust and cope in the context of these family changes, and for the court and other professionals to better involve children and communicate with them about the process.”

You can access the paper here.

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

• Illegal adoptees ‘forced to break the law’ by using their falsified birth certificates
• ‘Multiple failings’ in responses to claims of child sex abuse made against Lord Janner, report finds
• Inclusion of sustainability and climate change in the national curriculum (Commons debate set for 27 October)