This is a post by Sarah Phillimore. For more tweets about discussions on the night, see #talkfamilyjustice.
On 5th December 2017 The Transparency Project hosted a debate about privacy and accountability in the family courts, in order to mark the launch of our Guidance Note : Publication of Family Court Judgments.
This was also an opportunity to discuss wider issues of privacy versus accountability with the panel. The debate was chaired by His Honour Judge Stephen Wildblood QC, Designated Family Judge for Avon, North Somerset and Gloucestershire.
The panel were:
- The Honourable Mr Justice Baker(Judge of the Family Division, Senior Family Liaison Judge, Family Liaison Judge for the Western Circuit)
- Gretchen Precey (Chair NAGALRO),
- Sophie Ayers (Independent Social Worker, formerly statutory services),
- Louise Tickle (Freelance journalist),
- Callum May (BBC News Producer)
Sadly Hannah Markham QC and Suespciousminds couldn’t make it but were represented on the panel by The Transparency Project Chair, Lucy Reed.
You can view a video of the event on YouTube and below.
The event was aimed at anyone with an interest in social work, journalism or in family law and justice – so the hope was that many others beyond the professionals of law, social work or journalism would attend. The question of what is the balance between privacy for children and accountability of those who intervene in the lives of families is clearly one of wide importance for many others. This question clearly resonated with a wide cross section of people as approximately 250 people registered for tickets on the night and the audience had a variety of questions and issues to raise with the panel.
When asked the question – should be the family courts be more open? – the audience were roughly split 50/50. Time and again speakers came back to the fundamental tension of how to promote openness and yet protect children from having their family difficulties published for many thousands to read. Anonymising judgments can be difficult and time and resource consuming and will not always deal with the problems of ‘jigsaw identification’
Transparency is all very well – but jig-saw identification is a very real danger.
What are the challenges for journalistic ethics here? #MAResearch17 https://t.co/h1JgUK8TLg— Jenny Kitzinger (@JennyKitzinger) December 5, 2017
An audience member asked – what IS transparency? What is its purpose? Lucy Reed answered simply and powerfully
.@famioo we at @seethrujustice should have an answer! The purpose of transparency is accountability, understanding and trust – and with those three things you have better justice. That is the purpose. #talkfamilyjustice
— transparency project (@seethrujustice) December 5, 2017
This answer encapsulated the emerging themes of the debate:
- Fear
- Lack of trust
- Lack of accountability
Most troubling was the clear message from journalists and parents present about the far reaching impact of the fear of talking about their cases – if they spoke negatively, they risked repercussions from social workers and the court. As HHJ Wildblood QC remarked; the Article 10 right of freedom of speech includes freedom of expression and your freedom to complain.
The publication of judgments was doing little to tackle those issues due to the problem identified at the outset by Suesspiciousminds – ‘good news writes in white ink’. Judgments that simply reflected the worst cases when things had gone very badly wrong thus cemented an unhelpful and reactive culture of ‘blame and shame’. There seems little doubt that such a culture compounds the difficulties for local authorities and social workers in engaging in conversations about the work they do and why they do it. And thus the cycle of distrust and fear continues.
For me, the most powerful comments about the real dangers posed by this atmosphere of fear and distrust were made by the journalist Louise Tickle, who pulled no punches.
.@louisetickle that question reflects that people are scared to say anything at all. What I hear is that people are very frightened to speak to me, scared of what would happen if I turned up to their court case. Sense of fear pervades the system. #talkfamilyjustice
— transparency project (@seethrujustice) December 5, 2017
the current system is very dangerous in a democracy. It stifles journalists before we can even start. I pitched idea – why so many children in care? Editor 'its just unbelievably difficult to get around reporting restrictions' @louisetickle
— transparency project (@seethrujustice) December 5, 2017
Concerned that social workers are not used to scrutiny. Having spoken with judges I find a lot of judicial sympathy. would look positively on applications to report care proceedings as long as care taken not to identify people #talkfamilyjustice
— transparency project (@seethrujustice) December 5, 2017
It was very sobering to hear the assessment of another profession that the family justice system is a danger to democracy – and judging from the audience reaction and applause to Louise Tickle’s comments, this is an issue requiring urgent consideration.
However, for me there also remained a very important area that was mentioned by Mr Justice Baker but not tackled during the evening – the impact of social media.
Everyone present was alive to the real difficulty of balancing the need to keep children safe from pruient interest in their family difficulties against recognition that the system must become more open. However, without consideration of the ‘wild west’ of social media, this is a debate that risks becoming redundant. We are debating about how to deal with a mouse infestation in our kitchen when there is actually a tiger in the bathroom that wants to eat us.
The fact is that on a daily basis parents are posting photographs, names and details of their cases and social media platforms appear to have both limited will and ability to deal with this quickly and consistently.
From my perspective, the debate illustrated powerfully the limits to what ‘transparency’ encompasses, and the need to remain alive to the tensions and inherent difficulties in promoting it as a universal good in family proceedings.
As James Baldwin said – not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced. These discussions are very important and I am proud to be part of them.
‘The fact is that on a daily basis parents are posting photographs, names and details of their cases and social media platforms appear to have both limited will and ability to deal with this quickly and consistently’.
This could be dealt with very simply by social services. For parents who have had children removed for abuse or neglect, something along the lines of, if you post pictures of your children online, we will prosecute/imprison you for that, using the proof of abuse/neglect (criminal standard) as evidence of you putting your children at risk. As for the poor parents who have lost their children after the inherent character assassination that goes with ‘risk of future emotional harm’, many, many of them would do just about anything to see their children, and given that they will highly likely be reunited via facebook well before their 18th birthday, an offer of face to face contact would be enough for most of them to comply with taking pictures down.
It’s almost like adopters and professionals are clutching at memories of old times, when they could have a child adopted and not worry about social media. Those days are gone for G-ds sake. All this beating around the bush is doing, is leaving children one step closer to the facebook reunion without support for that, when keeping good contact could avert that disaster for a lot of these children.
I intended to get to this meeting, but traffic (over 90 minutes and still an hour away) stopped me. I just opened the video to see the Judge that gagged me on the panel. This would have been very upsetting to find out on arrival. This is about accountability, and there is no accountability in secret courts. In our case, there has been the most hideous crimes hidden, to protect professionals. There must be a route for people to take for accountability, and until then, open the courts, if there is nothing to hide. The name of the protected person can still be protected, this is just excuses for professional misconduct.
Amanda, Thanks for your comment. The names of all panel members were clearly advertised on all material relating to this event.