Posts

The Everlasting Discussion of Lasting Powers of Attorney
An interview with recently-retired senior judge of the Court of Protection, Denzil Lush, on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday 15 August 2017, and associated coverage on the BBC News website and other mainstream media, has led to a flurry of comment and...

Family Court judge accused of misfeasance in public office by social worker he criticised
This is a sad and unsatisfactory story. In November last year, the Court of Appeal allowed an appeal brought by an unnamed social worker and an unnamed police officer against findings of an unnamed judge against them. The unusual feature of the case was that neither...

Lasting Powers of Attorney in the news – a more detailed explanation
This is a guest post from Victoria Butler Cole (@TorButlerCole), with contributions made by Heledd Wyn (@heledd_wyn) and regular Transparency Project contributor Barbara Rich (@barbararich_law). On 15 August 2017, the BBC ran a story about powers of attorney arising...

Rights: privacy, anonymity and freedom of expression on family cases
‘Open justice’ in family proceedings As a High Court judge (Mostyn J) has commented (in Appleton & Anor v News Group Newspapers Ltd & Anor [2015] EWHC 2689 (Fam), [2016] 2 FLR 1) rights to open justice in family proceedings are a mess; though – sad to...

Can parents publicly petition against care orders?
The answer to the question is yes, in very limited circumstances and where no harm can be shown as likely to the children. In Southend Borough Council v CO and DW [2017] EWHC 1949 (Fam), reported on BAILII last month, the High Court judge decided not to order parents...

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 Are there other cases like...

Public and private, the limits of transparency in Charlie Gard’s case – an update
UPDATED 23 AUGUST 2017 to add developments since date of first posting under the sub-heading "The story becomes the story" Over the weekend of 22 and 23 July I wrote a post about the legal dispute between Great Ormond Street Hospital and the parents of 11 month old...
Joint Research : CAFCASS and Women’s Aid
CAFCASS and Women's Aid have collaborated on research about allegations of domestic abuse in child contact cases. We published a guest post by psychologist Sue Whitcombe on this here : Looking beyond the headlines: domestic abuse allegations in family proceedings. We...

Looking beyond the headlines: domestic abuse allegations in family proceedings
This is a guest post from Dr Sue Whitcombe (@drsue2014), a psychologist working with high conflict family breakdown and parental alienation. It is re-posted with kind permission, having been originally published via Linkedin. A post from the Reporting Watch Team about...

10 cases like Charlie’s? Actually we’re not sure…
We wrote earlier today about a Guardian article that suggested that there had been 10 cases like Charlie Gard's so far this year (18 last year), and that they were being dealt with in secret. You can read that post here : Are there other cases like Charlie’s? We had...