Blog
Name-calling of judges
Image of Eleanor Rathbone MP., who the President describes as holding an honoured place amongst the family law reformers of the middle 20th century. Younger readers may not be aware that the Sunday Times was once a serious newspaper. Yesterday’s edition featured the...
Bob the Builder – Mail, please fix it!
The Daily Mail reported yesterday that a 'Nurse's one-year-old son is taken from her care after she let him sit in a Bob The Builder toy car that was 'inappropriate' for his age'. There are 1,200 comments on the article. What the heck? Do the family courts really take...
Family Court Reporting Watch
Correcting, clarifying or commenting on media reports of family court cases Explaining or commenting on published judgments of family court cases Highlighting other transparency news MEDIA (MIS)REPORTS OF FAMILY COURT CASES The Spectator, The Times, The Guardian, The...
Charlie Gard, Alfie Evans and R (A Child): Why A Medical Treatment Significant Harm Test Would Hinder Not Help
This is a guest post by Katie Gollop QC and Sarah Pope. Katie represented Great Ormond Street hospital in the Charlie Gard case, and tweets as @katiegollop Sarah and Katie appeared in the recent case of Re R (A Child) [2018] EWFC 28. Sarah tweets as @sbvpope. Shortly...
Talking about social work
We recently wrote about an article by Louise Tickle in the Guardian which had caused a certain amount of controversy, in particular arising from her use of the term 'kidnap' to describe failures of local authorities to act appropriately when accommodating children...
Transparency – why it matters, what it means
This is the text of a speech delivered by Chair of The Transparency Project, Lucy Reed at the Bloomsbury Family Law Conference on 16 May 2018, at Gray’s Inn. Transparency - why it matters, what it means What IS transparency and why does it matter? Implications for...
The Abuse of Alfie’s Rights: A Gilded Death is Still a Death
Introduction: #AlfiesArmy v #ImWithAlderHey – an unbridgeable divide? Alfie's life, his legal battles, and his death, have polarised opinion. Decent people on both sides of the debate have been able to acknowledge how awful it must be to be in this situation – both to...
Alfie Evans, best interests, and parental rights
By now, we all know the terrible story of Alfie Evans, who spent 16 months of his two years of life in hospital as his brain turned to water and cerebral spinal fluid and who died following the removal of life sustaining ventilation. I say ‘we all know’, but the...
New book on transparency published by Transparency Project trustees
Our three trustees have been working hard for the last few months writing a book all about transparency. It has just been published by Bloomsbury. The book is aimed primarily at professionals working in family courts. You can get a 15% discount on the book by quoting...
Why words matter – the debate about ‘disclosure’
Family Law publishes a regular column by The Transparency Project. This blog post originally appeared in the April 2018 issue, [2018] Fam Law 464 On 15 February 2018, The Transparency Project began a dialogue about the use of language by professionals who...