Blog
How do family courts use ‘barring orders’?
One of the tasks of the new review of family courts and domestic abuse announced last month by the MoJ is to examine courts’ use of barring orders. (By the way, we don't know when the three months for the review starts, although we are now three weeks in from the...
How does the family court deal with domestic abuse? A snapshot – Part 2
This is Part 2. You can read Part 1 here. A (A Child) [2019] EWFC B16 (12 March 2019) In this case, the court was making a final decision in care proceedings. The decision to be made was whether a child could be cared for by both of his parents, just his mother...
How does the family court deal with domestic abuse? A snapshot
This is a first post from Sophie Smith-Holland, one of our new contributors. Sophie tweets as @SSmithHolland. The post is divided into two parts. This is Part One. The question of how the Family Court deals with domestic abuse has had a huge amount of public...
New What Works Centre proposals to evaluate Family Group Conferences for children on the edge of care: A call for dialogue
https://twitter.com/robin_23_99/status/1135511461760000000 For anyone else wondering what this tweet was all about, here's what we've made of it so far. Family Group Conferences (FGCs) are family-led planning meetings. Their use is well established in child protection...
Do social workers have a duty of care to protect children of local authority tenants?
You can tell this was likely to be an important case because there are five ‘interverners’ – organisations that have an interest, in principle, in the outcome – in this particular case, from a human rights and children’s rights perspective. The applicants were two...
Independent research on domestic abuse and family courts
In the Victoria Derbyshire television programme on 16 May, Sir James Munby, the former President of the Family Division, acknowledged (via a written statement) the weight of expressions of dissatisfaction and concern that was building up about orders for contact...
![Money, money, money, must be funny, in an [anonymised beneficiary’s] world: protecting child beneficiaries in variation of trust cases](https://transparencyproject.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/adolescence-adorable-baby-1089069-1080x675.jpg)
Money, money, money, must be funny, in an [anonymised beneficiary’s] world: protecting child beneficiaries in variation of trust cases
A typical plot development in old novels is the sudden discovery of unexpected wealth, usually in the form of an inheritance, or the discovery of a long lost will or hidden relationship to a wealthy benefactor. That is sometimes what it...
Legal blogging by consent
On 10 May I attended the Family Court to see if I could attend a hearing under the Legal Blogging Pilot before heading off to collecting judgment in one of my cases at noon. I wasn’t sure that this would be very productive because of the fact I could only fit in a...
A plea for help
This is a plea for help. Think baby kitten up a tree. Or @seethrujustice between funding streams. Seriously, we’re trying out new ideas to keep our Family Court Reporting Watch Project going between funding streams, while we put our energy into funding...
Spotlight on the family courts: But is it enough? The Victoria Derbyshire Show view
For anyone who missed Tuesday's third episode in the BBC Victoria Derbyshire show’s investigation into how the family courts treat victims of domestic abuse, it’s available at catch up here (5:39 to 23:18). The more nuanced, collaborative, and solutions focused tones...