Posts
Adoption – rhetoric and facts (again)
Last Sunday, the Prime Minister was widely quoted from the Sunday Times as being 'unashamedly pro-adoption' in describing the new Children and Social Work Bill announced later last week in the Queen's Speech. The aims of the provisions in the Bill on adoption are,...
CPConf2016 Manifesto
What do we want to achieve? This is a post by Sarah Phillimore, wearing her 'conference organiser' hat. The Transparency Project is supporting CPConf2016 as an example of an event that aims to improve public understanding of the family law system. It is not the remit...
Section 20 Guidance Mark 2
Just a brief note to confirm we've now uploaded version 2 of the section 20 guidance having incorporated all your helpful feedback (sorry, some of us were on holiday so this was not as quick as we had hoped!) You can find version 2 here and in the Resources section....
Who is legally ‘the parent’ when something goes horribly wrong?
There are several instances in the media this week of Kandyce Downer being incorrectly described as a foster carer of the child she killed. See, for example here in the Telegraph. If Ms Downer had been a foster carer, there would have been local authority oversight...
The prurient press and a Court of Protection decision that had a profound effect on a family
In V v Associated Newspapers [2016] EWCOP 21, published on 25 April, Mr Justice Charles, Deputy President and Judge in Charge of the Court of Protection, uses the word ‘prurient’ several times about the press coverage of earlier judgments in the case of 'C', the woman...
Court of Protection pilot scheme: further observations
Having attended two earlier hearings in the Court of Protection under its transparency pilot scheme, described here and here, last week I paid a third visit in the hope of picking up further information about the court’s work. This time, I had heard about the case on...
When Transparency Goes Wrong
This weekend a judgment from care proceedings was published on BAILII, late on Friday night. This is not unusual. But what was unusual was the fact that it was a judgment relating to a fact finding hearing in respect of sexual abuse to a young child, in which all the...
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...