Britain’s family court boss, Andrew McFarlane, has started a campaign to get people working inside the family justice system to stick to the guidance in place for public family law (care) cases, including enforcing a 26-week deadline in which to complete these cases.
The deadline was originally designed to ensure that children did not languish inside the care system, but experiences inside the system have shown the deadline to be pointless. Any length of time away from what children know is for the most part hugely detrimental to them, including abrupt removals which mean children are isolated from the people and places they have known all their lives.
While this kind of removal may be appropriate in some cases, it is only appropriate in a very small number of instances, with most children benefitting from regular and safe contact with their natural families in environments they are familiar with, or comfortable in.
The 26-week deadline is really about ensuring the family courts are not clogged up with cases, and bear no significance for children in care.
The time it takes to process care proceedings in Britain is currently at a nine-year high, with cases taking 44 weeks to complete on average in 2021.
McFarlane also insists that families identify a potential carer within a week – an almost impossible task for some families, as they struggle with resources and other challenges linked to their circumstances.
Another dim-witted call by McFarlane can be seen in his demand that expert witnesses should only be asked to give evidence where “necessary to assist the court” rather than where it is is “desirable or helpful.” What is help, if it is not assistance?
Another example of our family court focusing on the superficial aspects of the law to get these cases out of the system as quickly as possible.
If McFarlane really cared about children, so much more could be done to ensure children in care are treated properly. The rest, of course, would just fall into place.
There is a good summary of the statement on LexisNexis for subscribers.
This is an extract from the summary:
The President sets out the basics of what is required to get back to operating the PLO and to meet the statutory requirement of completing each public law children case within 26 weeks:
• the PLO pre-proceedings process, with the engagement of parents and a thorough assessment exercise, following the Department for Education guidance and the PLWG recommendations, is essential
• only very rare cases that are truly urgent should be the subject of an urgent first hearing
• the first hearing should be the case management hearing (CMH), held not before day 12 and no later than day 18—an advocates meeting is to be held no later than two days before the CMH
• parents are expressly required to identify any family members for assessment at, or within a week of, the CMH
• no other hearing should normally be listed after the CMH until the issues resolution hearing (IRH)
• experts should only be instructed where to do so is necessary to assist the court to resolve the proceedings justly, rather than where it is merely desirable or helpful (CFA 2014, s 13(6))
• the third hearing in the case, if necessary, will be the final hearing
• at the IRH or final hearing the court is only required to evaluate and decide upon the following issues:
○ are the ChA 1989, s 31 threshold criteria satisfied?
○ if so, what are the permanence provisions of the care plan (ChA 1989, ss 31(3A), 31(3B))?
○ what are the contact arrangements (ChA 1989, s 34(11))?
○ by affording paramount consideration to the welfare of the child, what final order(s), if any, should be made?
• the court is not required to consider any aspect of the care plan other than the permanence provisions
• robust case management by the court is required at all stages including, where necessary, regular compliance hearings to deal with any failure by a party to meet dates, the monitoring of compliance with the court timetable and, if needed, the reporting of any failures to the court
McFarlane’s statement can be viewed for free here.
Researching Reform 
Load of crap how about 4 years to sort case out and a judge falls a sleep in court
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I love the way Sir Andrew says “• parents are expressly required to identify any family members for assessment at, or within a week of, the CMH”
Most parents would not know about this requirement at all but if they did they probably would not know what a CMH was or why it was necessary.
Yes they might have a lawyer who would be unlikely to tell them this and would be almost bound to lose their case anyway.
If Sir Andrew really wants to solve the overcrowding in the family courts he should forbid the other judges from taking children into care for “risk” and confine them to cases where children acually have suffered significant harm.
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More unrealistic demands from this Judge I see. He was doing the same back in the early 2000’s with ‘children!’ if their parent(s) wanted to be in with a chance of supposedly getting their youngest child home only for that not to transpire.
It’s also strange when you have your Solicitor submit family letters as evidence into Family Court you’ve been set up behind your back not mentioned once in Court.
This is happening to parent(s) who like me, had not hurt their children Xx
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Reblogged this on tummum's Blog.
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Unfortunately McFarlane is simply tinkering around with trivialities and making no real difference. most parents lose in court and thats a fact. Ian Josephs has spent years stating the obvious. if parents have not been charged and convicted of harming their children then the SS should not be allowed to launch court proceeding to remove the children. in my view this would cut the amount of case by at least 80%.
Who else agrees ?
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Natasha can you introduce an edit button on here to correct typo errors.
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No, I can’t. I don’t have any control over the design in this way.
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Facts.
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I 100% agree with you Dr Manhattan;
if parents have not been charged and convicted of harming their children then the SS should not be allowed to launch court proceeding to remove the children.
{This should be enshrined in law}
Yes it would certainly cut court cases down massively, I wonder if there’s any legislative law that can used to exercise this point.
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McFarlane demands that expert witnesses should only be asked to give evidence where “necessary to assist the court”.
I personally think this is good news as many court-appointed expert psychologist and psychiatrist reports are awful. Prof Jane Ireland published research in 2012 where 2/3 of psychological assessment reports trawled from UK Family Courts were ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’.
Whenever a protective parent brings child sexual abuse disclosures to the attention of the police, all-too-frequently processes are handed down to Social Workers who lack the pre-requisite qualification, knowledge and tools to properly investigate. They do what they CAN do – which is getting a ‘Hired Gun’ to claim ‘Paranoid/Delusional Personality Disorder’ while omitting the DSM-5 definition (American Psychiatric Association, 2013, p. 819) which remains identical to the DSM-III (p. 765) and DSM-IV-TR (p.821) with a critical safeguard against the prevailing ‘Discourse of Disbelief’ in that ‘incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary’ is required to make that diagnosis:
delusion – a false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone beliefs and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary.
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If Sir Andrew wants to solve over crowding in family courts – then I’d like to share the following . When children have the bravery and courage to come forward to their loving protective safe parent and share CSA /CSE disclosures against others including their other parent ( CSA is NOT for family court) then I feel rather than relevant agencies inc police and children services looking for excuses to cover up serious abuse disclosures and secondly look for ways to counter attack the loving safe mother / parent with accusations of neglect – pretty much as soon as the child’s CSA disclosures are began to be shared with the relevant authorities and in turn in my eyes to put a veil over the child’s CSA disclosures not against the living safe parent to get them wrongfully in to family courts and the CSA disclosures that should be taken seriously and which should be criminal proceedings gets covered up and the perpetrators protected .. in turn with out evidence against the loving safe mother the child are separated from all they love and know .. innocent lives destroyed .
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Also I’d like to share that in some cases Family Group conference are not offered to the protective parent that shares their child’s CSA disclosures and speaking from experience these conferences are not held up Until 6 months after the child has been taken from all they loved and know to unregulated illegal children’s homes 150 Mike’s away . Instead of been allowed to stay with family until the safe parent proved their innocence and showed that they had been counter attacked . Instead of the child beren further traumatised by been wretched from their loving mother/ parent , By not following correct procedures and correct lines of whar should be police investigations, the innocent parents are shoved in to family Court proceedings – instead of full competent police investigations in to the child’s CSA disclosures taking place. Shocking that in today’s society our children are failed in this way .
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