Posts
Taking Liberties: A simple guide to DOL.
This article is about Deprivation of Liberty involving children. To understand Deprivation of Liberty, I am afraid we have to start elsewhere completely… Secure Accommodation Secure accommodation is a special kind of placement for children who are in care, who...
The Court of Appeal considers Domestic Abuse – Part 2
This is part 2 of a series of posts about the conjoined appeals. You can read part 1 here. This post summarises the individual issues in the four appeals. Part 3 will cover the wider issues of principle and some of the themes that emerged in the course of the hearing,...
The Court of Appeal considers Domestic Abuse – Part 1
This week three judges in the Court of Appeal held a 3 day long appeal hearing all about domestic abuse cases. This series of posts provide a summary of what the hearing was about and how it went. The decision is expected in a few weeks time. The appeal was in fact...
Domestic Abuse Appeals – the warm up act?
Starting tomorrow, the Court of Appeal will consider four conjoined appeals where, it is said, the court's approach to the handling of allegations of domestic abuse was wrong. There is significant interest in those appeals, and various journalists and reporters will...
Pippa Knight – Harm Without Awareness
This is a guest post from Katie Gollop QC. Katie is a barrister at Serjeants’ Inn Chambers specialising in healthcare related law. She’s also a Deputy High Court Judge allocated to the Family Division and Court of Protection. Alert: this blog about Guy’s and St...
The Domestic Abuse Bill and family courts
As was noted in the ‘Harm report’ published in June last year and the Family Justice Council forum that was held on 14 December, there is mounting concern about the way family courts deal with allegations of domestic abuse that arise in some contact disputes. Starting...
Law, Justice & the Spaces Between
Transparency enthusiasts may be interested in this exciting series of free webinars running in January to March, investigating openness and press reporting of our courts and tribunals. The webinars have been organised by Transparency Project journalist Louise Tickle...
2020 Looking back and giving thanks
It's been a strange old, tough old year. I wanted to take a moment to look back at some of the work done by Transparency Project volunteers and guest writers over the year and to extend thanks to them for their contribution to our team and our work. We've seen some...
W (Children): judge’s recusal does not indicate bias
This is a guest post by John Bolch, reproduced with kind permission from his Family Lore blog. Reading the case name W (Children: Reopening/recusal) I assumed that this would be another of those applications by a party, invariably the father, for the recusal of...
Tidying up our own back yard – The Family Justice Council event on the Harm Report findings
Monday night’s FJC (online) event was billed as exploring the report and recommendations of the expert panel on Assessing Risk of Harm to Children and Parents in Private Law Children Cases [June 2020]. The (short) ‘final’ report of the working group charged...