Posts
Adoption – where are we now?
Varying views and concerns have emerged in the weeks following the publication of the government paper on adoption in England. The policy landscape is still far from clear or agreed. The Supreme Court judgment published this week, on whether it is in the best...
Angela Wrightson, open justice and ‘piling needles on haystacks’
BY JUDITH TOWNEND. ORIGINALLY POSTED AT THE JUSTICE GAP. Thanks to The Justice Gap for permision to re-post here. Unlike the two children who murdered the toddler James Bulger in 1993, and the teenage boy who killed secondary school teacher Ann Maguire in 2014, the...
New “child-friendly” court design
Readers may recall last year’s Report of the Vulnerable Witnesses & Children Working Group (March 2015) (the “Hayden / Russell Working Group”) which recommended at para 34: “The need for greater transparency has been a leitmotif of recent modernisation of family...
Press Release: #CPConf2016
How do we keep children safe and families intact when the social care system is no longer fit for purpose? The Transparency Project is pleased to support the second conference to discuss how best to keep children safe and families intact on Friday 3 June at the Priory...
Court of Protection pilot scheme: finding out what the case is about
Following my first experience of attending a Court of Protection hearing in public under the pilot scheme, described in an earlier post, I attended another case hearing last week to see how far it would follow the same pattern, and whether I could pick up some more...
Family courts in the headlines this week
Family courts hit the mainstream news headlines this week. Here is a brief summary of transparency related matters. Dr Waney Squier and expertise on non-accidental head injuries and babies The esoteric subject of an expert witness in the family courts came up, because...
An exercise in collaborative drafting….section 20 guidance
UPDATE FEB 2017 : In light of the judgment of the Court of Appeal in Hackney v Williams (see here) we will be looking at our guidance note to see if it needs amendment or updating. At The Transparency Project we tend to draft collaboratively, which can be a bit...
Social Media Evidence in Family Proceedings
I attended this very popular event organised by the London Family Justice Board at the Law Society this week. The large Common Room was packed. Unfortunately due to train issues I missed the very beginning and had to rush off before the end of questions but...
Poppi Worthington – legal aid
There have been a number of news reports today concerning the grant of legal aid to the father of Poppi Worthington, who was named by a judge as having sexually assaulted his daughter before she died. They are in very similar terms in (for example) The Times and The...
Court of Protection pilot scheme: an experiment in greater transparency
This post follows my experience attending a Court of Protection hearing for the first time, under its new transparency pilot. The last few years have seen a gradual process of opening up the Family Courts to greater public scrutiny, partly to comply better with the...