Posts
The Care Review ‘Case for Change’: A social worker/family justice eye view
The ongoing Care Review in England has been described by its leadership as ‘a once in a generation opportunity to transform the children’s social care system and improve the lives of children and their families’. It is generating much discussion amongst practitioners...
UK ordered to pay damages to social worker for failing to provide an effective remedy for breaches of her human rights
In 2017, we wrote about a case where a family court judge came in for some very serious criticism for his treatment of professionals in the course of a judgment. This post provides an update in light of a new judgment relating to the same case. You can read our...
The Lachaux libel case returns with an expensive result for the publishers
This post is not about family law; it’s about defamation law. It involves alleged behaviour by a husband (Bruno Lachaux) to his wife (Afsana Lachaux). Since their separation, Mr and Mrs Lachaux have been involved in litigation in the family court which we wrote about...
The Harm Report – one year on
June 2021 sees the first anniversary of publication of the report 'Assessing risk of harm to children and parents in private law children cases' (the Harm report). We have published a number of posts about the report. The UK government responded to the report that...
Bell v Tavistock – The Court of Appeal hearing
On 23 and 24 June 2021, the Court of Appeal heard the appeal of Bell v Tavistock. The hearing was live streamed on YouTube. At the time of writing, the videos are still available online and can be found here. We reported on the judgment of the lower court at the end...
Court transparency: academic and policy updates
Can transparency be in the limelight? Perhaps not, in scientific terms (or to avoid metaphor mixing), but court transparency is certainly having a moment. This is partly because of changes to the justice process expedited by COVID-19 and the...
Re I-A: Court of Appeal considers adoption and the inherent jurisdiction
Last week, the Court of Appeal heard yet another case where a birth parent was trying to get an adoption order set aside. The three children in Re I-A are, unusually but very fortunately, all living together in one adoptive family, following care and placement orders...
Dodgy drug test results
Four years ago we wrote about news reports of a police investigation into a drug testing lab that had carried out tests for the Family Court : https://www.transparencyproject.org.uk/police-investigating-drug-testing-lab-that-carried-out-tests-for-the-family-court/ The...
Plan for publication of judgments by The National Archives: what will become of BAILII?
This week the Ministry of Justice announced its plans for the archiving and publication of judgments in a comprehensive new national database to be managed by The National Archives (TNA). Till now, the main official collection of court judgments has been the British...
Headlines from the latest Cafcass Open Board Meeting: the emergency protocol, domestic abuse, and young people’s views on transparency
At the latest Cafcass Open Board Meeting we asked about news that Cafcass are starting to trigger their prioritisation protocol and open allocation hubs for private law cases in some areas, and for an update on handling of domestic abuse cases. The Family Justice...