Posts
Minister for Justice thanks The Transparency Project
Recently, we noticed there had been a Parliamentary Question about family courts on 7 June, from Robert Halfon MP, as follows: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to improve transparency in the Family Court process....
If you don’t like the rules, change ’em
In 2017 we asked the Family Procedure Rule Committee to consider temporarily amending the Family Procedure Rules by way of a temporary pilot scheme to test out allowing 'legal bloggers' into family court hearings, alongside journalists (they have been allowed to...
Dispatches – a round up
There is a lot of twitter comment about last week's Dispatches programme (for those who didn't catch the show it can be viewed here). We have published two posts from members of TP setting out their personal views (here and here), but we thought we'd try and gather up...
Dispatches – why all the commotion is a good thing
I am the chair of The Transparency Project. This post represents my personal view about the Dispatches programme. It is not offered as a view from The Transparency Project as an organisation. It is based on my experience over two decades as a barrister representing...
Child protection investigations – no further action necessary?
The author of this post is a child protection social worker, who writes under a pseudonym, including in the Guardian. He previously wrote this post for TP. Are hundreds of thousands of families being put through unnecessary investigations by unchecked social...
Why I am OK with Dispatches
Channel 4 broadcast an episode of its Dispatches documentary series on Tuesday, called Torn Apart: Family Courts Uncovered, presented by Louise Tickle, above. Responses to it have varied widely. Here's mine. True, it featured a young man affected and lots of...
When does ‘Deprivation’ become Depravation?
At the beginning of this year, I wrote a short post which tried to explain the increasingly troublesome area of Deprivation of Liberty in an accessible way. It is, in effect, the power of the High Court under its ancient powers of protection to authorise that a child...
Justice Minister responds to question in Parliament about transparency in the Family Court process – with a wrong answer…
We've just spotted that in May a Conservative MP, Robert Halfon posed this written question in the House of Commons : To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to improve transparency in the Family Court process. Last week, Justice...
Too much transparency even for me
I know I'm the chair of the Transparency Project so I'm supposed to be all 'More transparency! Raahhhh!'. At least that is what people assume, as if transparency and privacy are mutually exclusive and as if we have to pick sides. I wish it were that simple.... Last...
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...