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

• ‘World-first’ NHS England rapid genetic tests ‘could save thousands of children’
• Church of England abuse cases run to hundreds – report
• U.K. nurse accused of murdering 7 infants sent sympathy card to parents after killing baby girl, prosecutor says

The Family Court Transparency Implementation Group (TIG) has recommended the creation of an “Anonymisation Unit” which will support family court judges needing to anonymise judgments for publication, in its first progress report.

The initiative follows a disastrous string of errors by Family Court President Andrew McFarlane, leading on one occasion to the unintended publication of graphic material shared in a child protection hearing.

Following Researching Reform’s inquiry to the President’s office about the error, it became clear that McFarlane had not put the document through an appropriate review process or confirmed the publication with any of the parties, lawyers assisting the parties or the judge who had submitted the file for publication.

On a separate occasion, which has not been disclosed until now, Researching Reform had to contact the President’s Office after finding the name of a child in a judgment which had not been properly redacted. The office pulled the judgment from every website which had uploaded it, and amended the document. We then asked the office if they could send out a second email alerting subscribers to the document’s publication once it had been edited and re-uploaded. A notification was never issued.

The publication of the graphic transcript occurred less than one month after 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 on 29th October, 2021. In a statement on the judiciary’s website, he said there needed to be  “a major shift in culture and process to increase the transparency”. He added that the report’s aim was to balance two issues: developing public confidence in the Family Justice system while maintaining the anonymity of families and children inside the system.

The Family Court Transparency Implementation Group’s first report offers several more recommendations and updates.

The group confirmed that it would be piloting a new reporting scheme in three courts — due to be named in October — which will enable reporters and legal bloggers to attend and report on proceedings normally conducted in private in the family courts, while also ensuring the confidentiality of the children and parties involved.

The group set out its data collection strategy to gain insights into families attending the courts, which included six questions to guide the exercise:

1. What happens to a family before they come to court?
2. Who comes to court?
3. What are their experiences of court?
4. How is the family court operating?
5. What decisions are being made about children and families?
6. What are the immediate and ultimate outcomes of these decisions?

The group looked at how to manage the press during its meeting, going so far as to suggest that the Family Court could and should “ensure that any reporting of Family Court proceedings is reliable and well informed.” Journalists have their own set of ethical and legal guidance they must follow, and are unlikely to pay much, if any, attention to the President trying to influence reporting in the family courts.

The team are aiming to write up the research and proposals connected to the report’s actions in November.

The full report can be accessed here.

The current head of the family courts, Andrew McFarlane, has suggested separating and divorcing couples share the same lawyer, in a speech given last month at an annual event held by the Family Mediators Association.

The suggestion follows an ongoing struggle inside Britain’s family courts to deal with a significant case backlog. While the Covid-19 pandemic has contributed to the family justice system’s overload, concerns about the increasing volume of cases in these courts have been raised by the government and court reform advocates for several years.

In the speech, McFarlane refers to the new ‘one lawyer: two clients’ model, which enables the same lawyer to advise both parties in a divorce or separation. This form of combined legal representation — which historically has not been allowed over conflict of interest concerns — has been enabled under a new law (the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020) which lets couples make a joint application to end their relationship.

McFarlane said:

“There is now a market for legal advice to be given on the ‘one lawyer, two clients’ (or ‘one couple, one lawyer’) model. ‘The Divorce Surgery’, an early entrant into this field, is an arms length agency run by two members of the Family Bar. For a fixed fee, which varies depending upon the type and complexity of the issues, the Surgery will appoint a barrister to meet with the two parties, absorb the relevant detail from each about their circumstances, and then deliver advice as to the likely outcome if the contested issues were to litigated before a court. The model is applied to issues relating to both finance and children.”

Several law firms are currently piloting this model, including Withers, Mills & Reeve, and O’Sullivan Family Law. Family mediation lobby group Resolution launched its own scheme in September.

The event was held to “relaunch family mediation”, which has been spectacularly unsuccessful in England and Wales. Figures published by the government about Mediation Information and Assessment Meetings (‘MIAMs’) show a sharp drop in uptake over several years, while family mediation in general has decreased by at least 50 percent.

There are several reasons for a lack of family mediation uptake in Britain, none of which have been addressed by the government or the family courts. Issues include communication and trust breakdown between couples. Mediation simply cannot work in situations where parties are mistrustful, unable to communicate, or scared.

In his speech, McFarlane tries to make a case for combining the ‘one couple, one lawyer’ model with mediation, in what is an attempt at trying to keep the sector, or family law market, afloat.

Legal fees for divorce have reached unaffordable levels, and legal aid has been almost completely removed for divorce cases except in circumstances where domestic abuse allegations are made. McFarlane proposes that legal aid should be given to couples who use the model, as well as family law mediation.

That proposal could be seen as an attempt to coerce cash-strapped families into these processes, particularly as McFarlane goes on to suggest that Mediation Information and Assessment Meetings could be made compulsory, even in cases where domestic violence is present.

The fact that McFarlane suggests changing the name to Information and Assessment Meetings (dropping ‘Mediation’) and making the meetings more general in tone makes no difference to the outcome on the ground for the victim or survivor of domestic violence. It is still a meeting with their abuser, in an environment that is likely to feel deeply traumatic.

There is also currently no conclusive evidence that mediation works for divorcing or separating couples, but there are very real concerns about how initiatives like the ‘one couple, one lawyer’ model might affect a partner experiencing domestic violence.

From McFarlane’s failings to ensure the safe and correct publication process of family court judgments to his suggestion that the courts should issue “Pre-birth care orders” (which would have been illegal), this latest round of suggestions does little to reassure families in Britain that the system is competent, or on their side.

Useful Links:

• McFarlane’s speech
• Family Court Statistics Quarterly: April to June 2022

Welcome to another week.

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

• Scottish parents ‘live in fear’ of losing child after social services get involved in gender care
• Professor Brigid Daniel appointed to oversee children’s services plan (Scotland)
• Sex offenders among convicted criminals allowed to keep working as doctors in Scotland

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

• Colorado’s parenting evaluation industry profits as child custody cases thrown into chaos (US)
• Institutional Abduction & Abuse: The Forgotten Indigenous Children (Canada)
• Ofsted: Joint targeted area inspections to focus on ‘early help’ for children and families (UK)

A briefing paper by the government’s Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel has advised that bruising found in pre-mobile babies should not automatically lead to social workers launching a Section 47 inquiry.

Section 47 Inquiries, which are outlined in the Children’s Act 1989, are carried out by social workers in local authorities if they say they have reasonable cause to suspect that a child living our found in their area is suffering or likely to suffer significant harm.

Current guidelines about pre-mobile bruising for social workers and other health practitioners, established by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) say that where practitioners see bruises and ‘suspect’ abuse or maltreatment, they “should refer the child… to children’s social care, following local multi-agency arrangements.”

However, the review panel said it did not support “blanket policies that require Section 47s or other interventions without an initial appraisal of the circumstances of the presentation”. The panel also raised concerns that local authorities across the country were interpreting the process for launching Section 47 inquiries in ways which did not always reflect the laws or the guidance in place.

The panel made five recommendations, including clarifying current guidance, requiring a review by a health professional who has the right expertise to assess the bruise and other connected injuries, and reviews by all safeguarding partners of their current policies on bruising in non-mobile infants to make sure they are in line with the evidence base and national guidelines.

Pre-mobile bruising in babies is a controversial area in child protection. Once-accepted research on the phenomenon suggested that this kind of bruising was rare and more likely to be caused by abuse. New research has challenged this notion, and suggests instead that such bruises are much more common than first thought and can be caused accidentally by the babies themselves.

The panel’s briefing paper will be seen as a welcome development for families with experience of child protective services whose children have been removed from their care or who have been exposed to child protection proceedings, without cause.

Useful links:

• Panel briefing on pre-mobile bruising in babies
• Review panel page (including a full list of panel members)
• Helpful article on the development in Community Care

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

• MPs demand action from new Education Secretary as Children’s Services found lacking
• Former children’s commissioner Anne Longfield to sit on board that will take over Bradford Children’s Services
• Education secretary says government must intervene ‘firmly’ to ‘push’ underperforming schools into academy trusts

This month’s featured image is by Paul Brian Tovey, an adult adoptee who was abused by his adoptive parents as a child. Paul is Researching Reform’s Artist In Residence, which we consider an honour.

Paul now campaigns for adoptees to have the legal right to revert back to their birth identities.

Paul’s paintings reflect his experiences as an adoptee including the effect of his forced adoption on his mental health.

October’s painting is titled, “Enter the Dragon,” which symbolises support for the adoptee community in the form of a ‘truth dragon’. Speaking to Researching Reform, Paul said:

“In the effort to highlight more Adoptee pain and unmet needs which point in themselves to remedial measures, I had some help in designing a new pilot survey which tested whether or not “global adoptee” experience pointed to problems.

In the 2021 UK survey (which was made up of 7 questions) we saw 95 UK adoptees give responses and some showed large amounts of unmet needs for therapy help. We also picked up that 42% were child abused inside their experiences of adoption and 50% wanted revocation eased legally to leave their adoption altogether.

The new 2022 global survey went wider to see what was happening with other adoptees in other countries. The shock is just as bad in the 2022 survey from 304 global respondents as it was from the 2021 survey which had 95 UK Respondents.

A preliminary report of the latest survey will become available because I am mindful of the efforts adoptees put into the survey and I really think they need to see something in summary form. Because the 47 Questions generated hundreds of comments I will carefully examine those for any accidental identifiers and do more follow-up reports. Some questions generated enough comments to be justified as a survey in themselves.

I am an artist and I cope with seeing so much pain by drawing matters and recording them inside an “inner-scape”, where things are bravely faced and are seen to be “Inner-scapeable”. I draw the tears others cannot cry sometimes, but I do.”