Posts
Lessons from the Ellie Butler Case
Lessons from the Ellie Butler Case - Event on October 3rd 2016 Members of the Transparency Project will be speaking at an event organised by the London Regional Group of Resolution on October 3rd entitled 'Lessons from the Ellie Butler Case'. The venue is Charles...
The state of transparency: what happens when anonymisation safeguards fail?
Our FOI request The Transparency Project has been concerned for some time about judgments from family cases being published where the anonymisation was incomplete or non-existent. Since formation we have regularly noticed or been notified of such anonymisation errors,...
Update on Freedom of Information responses about adoption ‘targets’
We have received around 120 replies so far, from 173 English and Welsh councils asked about adoption performance management (including ‘targets’), under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. This is the second stage of research we began late last year into whether, and...
Transparency versus Confidentiality: the Re X judgment
What do we do when information is already in the public domain? And what are the risks to the child if an adult party is identified? On Friday 8th July the judgment was published of the President of the Family Division in the Matter of X (A Child) (No2) [2016] EWHC...
Ellie Butler – some useful resources
This post draws together some commentary and explanation about the Ellie Butler case, for those who are trying to get to grips with it. It is not complete - we will add to it as time goes on. A summary of the background : Ellie Butler suffered injuries when she was a...
Ellie Butler – drawing together some strands and discussion
Several family lawyers have been discussing this case on Twitter, and it was suggested to us that it might be helpful to draw together a document with some important questions and our answers. We won’t necessarily agree on everything, but even our disagreements might...
“Neglected children can stay with travellers in the spirit of diversity” [mis] reports the Daily Mail
See the following link for today's Daily Mail article suggesting Mr Justice Mostyn has left neglected traveller children in danger at home, in the wake of Ellie Butler's death and in the face of social workers seeking their removal - just to be tolerant towards...
Adopting more children from care will save £310m, says government – or does it?
Community Care tweeted this week that "Adopting more children from care will save £310m, says government", linking to the article of the same name. CommunityCare Adopting more children from care will save £310m, says government https://t.co/lCRehDDQ6a 17/06/2016,...
Can an adoption order be undone?
An adoption order made by a court in England and Wales is normally irreversible, once the time limits for appeal have passed. This premise will be under scrutiny in October, when a re-hearing of an earlier fact-finding family court decision is scheduled. In a case...
Mckenzie Friends Consultation – The response of The Transparency Project
We thought that The Transparency Project ought to produce a response to the recent consultation on fee-paid Mckenzie Friends. Now that we have finalised and submitted our response (just before the extended deadline - phew!) we are publishing it here for you to read....