Blog
The main ways to support the Transparency Project!
The Transparency Project is a registered charity, run almost entirely by volunteers who also have full-time jobs. We carry out an important legal function that no one else provides and our work is valued by professionals and families in the family justice system. We...
How does the family court treat domestic abuse?: A snapshot (continued)
This is a post from Sophie Smith-Holland, who tweets as @SSmithHolland. The question of how the Family Court deals with domestic abuse has had a huge amount of public and media attention recently. Concerns have been raised that the system is placing children and...
A view from the cheap seats
This is a guest post from Bob Greig, Co Chair of Only Mums and Only Dads and co author of 101 Questions Answered About Separating With Children (links below). Bob tweets as @OnlyDads. I have been asked to write a few words on the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) public call...
Father’s Day Revenge? Female perpetrated domestic abuse, homicide and suicide
On the 17th of June 2018, a father made an anxious call to Kent Police after his ex-partner failed to return their child after a period of unsupervised contact which had been agreed by the family court. Very sadly, the following morning, the Police found the bodies of...
The President’s Expert Witness Working Group Symposium: in which lawyers (for once) were not the loudest voices in the room
This is a post from Malvika Jaganmohan, one of our new contributors, who tweets as @MalvikaJaganmo1. A collective of medical and legal professionals descended on the Royal Courts of Justice on 4thJuly 2019 to discuss the current shortage of medical experts in the...
The Transparency Project – we don’t set out to please all of the people all of the time
We know that the issue of family courts dealing with domestic abuse is contentious. In fact, it’s almost impossible to talk about it without being criticised by someone or other. We knew this when we produced our guidance note for families, and we knew it when we made...
A view from the front row – a barrister’s perspective of the family court’s mishandling of children cases involving domestic abuse
This is a guest post from Dr Charlotte Proudman. Charlotte is a family law barrister at Goldsmith Chambers specialising in violence against women and girls. She tweets as @DrProudman. On 21 June 2019, the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) announcedthe identity of the...
Children Cases in the Family Court – Interim Proposals for Reform (Private Law)
Following on from our post summarising the key recommendations from Mr Justice Keehan's Public Law Working Group which can be found here, we now turn our attention to the issue of private law. The Child Arrangements Programme (the ‘CAP’) was introduced as a Practice...
Children Cases in the Family Court – Interim Proposals for Reform (Public Law)
Today, the President of the Family Court Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, published interim reports from his Public and Private Law Working Groups. The President opened with a short statement on his concerns around both the rising volume of care cases before the...
‘Custody fights blight four in ten break ups’ – A word of caution?
This is a first post from Kelly Reeve, new contributor, who tweets as @s37CA89research. Kelly recently completed a socio-legal research study on the use of section 37 Children Act 1989 at UEA. She was formerly a legal adviser at Coram Children’s Legal...