For her own good – a family court judge authorises the deprivation of a young person’s liberty

by Lucy R | Feb 8, 2023 | Comment, FCReportingWatch, Legal blogging

Last week at a hearing in Cardiff, His Honour Judge Furness KC made orders authorising measures which amounted to a deprivation of the liberty (DoL) of a teenage girl. I observed the hearing under the new Reporting Pilot that is operating in that court. As noted by...

Whatever happened to the ‘review of the presumption of parental involvement’?

by reporting watch team | Feb 6, 2023 | Comment, FCReportingWatch

In response to the Harm Report published back in June 2020, the government announced an urgent review of the legal presumption that continuing involvement with both parents is in a child’s welfare (introduced and added to the Children Act 1989 in 2014). This...

FAMILY JUSTICE: OSTIIS APERTIS?

by Guest Post | Jan 12, 2023 | Cases, Comment, FCReportingWatch, Legal blogging, Notorious, Transparency News

FAMILY JUSTICE: OSTIIS APERTIS?[1] Or a mantle of inviolable secrecy?[2] A challenge to those who would keep the doors closed This is a guest post by Sir James Munby, former President of the Family Division On 28 October 2021 the President published the outcome of his...

Mind the Gap – the welfare decisions for H-N, a child (PART TWO)

by Alice T | Dec 7, 2022 | Analysis, Cases, Comment, FCReportingWatch, Legal blogging

PART TWO  This is Part Two of a report from observing a final hearing in the Central London Family Court as a legal blogger and applying for the usual statutory bar on reporting to be lifted, so as to be able to publish this anonymised report. Part One is my...

Mind the Gap – the welfare decisions for H-N, a child (PART ONE)

by Alice T | Dec 7, 2022 | Analysis, Cases, Comment, FCReportingWatch, Legal blogging

This is a report from observing a final hearing in the Central London Family Court as a legal blogger and applying for the usual statutory bar on reporting to be lifted, so as to be able to publish this anonymised report. It’s split into two parts as it’s long. Part...

FGM: Bad-faith actors and unintended consequences

by Guest Post | Nov 22, 2022 | Cases, Comment, Explanation, FCReportingWatch

This is a guest post by Georgia Fineberg about the case of Nottingham County Council v OA & Anor [2022] EWFC 102 (17 August 2022). Georgia is a pupil barrister who has worked for nine years in the women’s voluntary sector, primarily...