Posts
Expert evidence about unexplained injuries in child protection cases
On 10 January, the Daily Mail reported about the alarming case of a baby named Teddy, who was removed from his parents' care when just six-weeks old, and remained away from them for five months while there was investigation into the causes of bruising on his face and...
Pragmatism versus Principle
We wrote back in January last year about a case where Mr Justice Peter Jackson (now in the Court of Appeal) had ruled against direct contact between children raised in an ultra-orthodox (Charedi) Jewish community and their transgender father, in essence because in...
‘All is not well with child protection in North Wales’
This observation was made by HHJ Gareth Jones in Wrexham Family Court in March 2017, in a judgment Re E [2017] EWFC 101 published in January 2018. HHJ Jones is a transparency hero – he is the only judge in Wales whose judgments regularly appear on BAILII, in...
Family Court Reporting Watch Roundup
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 Daily Mail - Polly Morgan commented on...
Monetary Madness Misreporting
I’m sorry to report that today’s Daily Mail article ‘The tick box divorce: Couples will fill in new ten-page online form detailing money and assets they want under plans to streamline the system’ is (to use a technical legal term) totes nonsense. I exaggerate. The...
Is the law becoming meaner to the poorer spouse?
There was an interesting article in The Times last week, ‘Is there such a thing as a good divorce? (paywall), written by Grania Langdon-Down. It was a bit of a hodge-podge of different concepts, but one bit I did find interesting was the suggestion that courts are...
The sector-led review into the rise in care applications and number of children in care: Wales
On 10 January, I attended a round table meeting arranged in Wales about the Care Crisis Review, which is a short-term enquiry funded by the Nuffield Foundation into the reasons for the rise in numbers of children in care and going through the courts. (A similar...
Crisis in Our Courts – and How to Solve it
That was the name of a seminar organised by the Society of Editors and hosted at the offices of the Telegraph Group in London, on 18 January 2018. But the crisis of the title seemed to have more to do with the state of local journalism and the decline of the local...
Kisses and cuddles not enough…
The BBC recently reported that two children were to be adopted 'as kisses and cuddles [were] not enough'. The use of a direct quotation and the inclusion of the judge's name in the headline and article, enabled us to locate the judgment in the case that the BBC were...
Cafcass, parental alienation and the law
This front page headline in The Guardian grabbed attention on 17 November 2017 : ‘Divorcing parents could lose children if they try to turn them against partner. Measures being trialled to prevent “parental alienation” feature penalties including permanent loss of...