This announcement appeared quietly on the Ministry of Justice website on 25 March –
Private Law Pathfinder Pilot: process evaluation and financial analysis
This report provides the findings of the process evaluation and exploratory financial analysis of the Pathfinder pilots in Dorset and North Wales family court areas.
We were surprised that there was little or no publicity about this evaluation, because we hear so much about how promising the Pathfinder model is, for example in the President’s end of year letter in July 2024 and even in Prime Minister’s Questions in answer to a question about the presumption of involvement.
The only media coverage of the announcement we could find was this story from BBC Wales – ‘Shorter family court hearings encouraging, says Minister’ (30 March).
There was however a press release about expanding the Pathfinder back on 5 February, as we reported in our recent Roundup. The model operates in all of Wales from March 2025 and in West Yorkshire from June 2025.
Background
The Pathfinder was developed after the Harm Report (2020) recommended a more investigative approach to private law disputes. The aims of the Pathfinder were to improve the experiences of families in child arrangements proceedings, reduce the re-traumatisation of victim-survivors of domestic abuse, reduce the amount of time families spent in court, and improve coordination between agencies. It began in North Wales and Dorset in February 2022 and expanded to South east Wales and Birmingham in spring 2024. We wrote a blog post about its operation in Cardiff here. The President has been vocal about his hopes that the Pathfinder will eventually becomes the default model in private law.
Overall this evaluation is positive, which makes it all the more mysterious that its publication has not been publicly announced. It was undertaken by a team at the University of Central Lancashire and two consultancy firms. However, it was quite limited in scope, focusing on the experiences of professionals and not directly involving the views and experiences of children and families. Lawyers for parents and children weren’t asked for their views either. Nor did the researchers look at any patterns in outcomes of cases, so we don’t know what difference the Pathfinder might make to the types of orders the courts make. The report states that this is not ‘an evaluation of impact’. Some future research to actually speak to children is apparently planned.
A quick overview of what the evaluation tells us:
- Professionals interviewed about their views and experiences were generally positive about the Pathfinder as an improved process
- Cases in the Pathfinder process don’t seem to cost more than the traditional model, and may cost less.
What it doesn’t tell us:
- What families who went through the Pathfinder thought about the process or the outcome of their case
- What differences (if any) the Pathfinder makes to the way cases are decided or agreed e.g. whether there are more or fewer contact orders made; more or fewer shared residence orders; did the Pathfinder affect applications by extended family members?; how many people settle without needing an order; whether those agreements or orders were effective; did any return to court? etc.
The study’s objectives and methods
1. To understand how the Pathfinder model has been implemented in each Pathfinder area, mapping the differences both between the two Pathfinder sites and between the Pathfinder and two other similar sites that did not use the Pathfinder.
2. To explore experiences of operating the pilot from the perspectives of the system delivery partners.
3. To estimate the cost per case, under the Pathfinder model and under the existing Child Arrangements Programme model.
Interviews were held with 67 people in HMCTS; judges; magistrates; Cafcass and Cafcass Cymru; domestic abuse support agencies; and local authorities (described as ‘delivery staff’ i.e. the providers of the service, not the recipients). These took place between September 2023 and January 2024, so they are more than a year old.
The period covered by the financial analysis isn’t clear although there is a huge amount of detail in Appendix C to the report on how the financial data across the services was analysed (for those who like that sort of thing).
What the researchers found
The benefits described by the interviewees included children being seen and heard earlier in the process, front loading information gathering, spending less time in court, a substantial reduction in the numbers of hearings, more support for victims, and the direct involvement of domestic abuse services.
The financial analysis is complicated by a number of factors but overall it appeared that Pathfinder cases cost roughly the same as non-Pathfinder on a case by case basis. There were indications that they might cost less, for example, they took up substantially less judicial time. There were some pressures on resources e.g the compressed timescale for Cafcass reporters. The report sounds a note of caution about the quality and consistency of the court data they were examining.
The future
There’s also a ‘Delivery Update’ published on the MoJ page. This lists three ‘lessons learned’ from the evaluation:
- There were too many open cases under the ‘old’ system when the pilots began, which made it difficult for staff to manage two parallel systems.
- A review stage between 3 and 12 months when families were contacted to see how things were going had been confusing and this stage has now been dropped from the model.
- The MoJ commissioning of domestic abuse services had been unsuccessful and these were now being commissioned through local Police & Crime Commissioners.
The update says that Pathfinder cases ‘resolve’ 11 weeks earlier than other cases and that by February 2025 the backlogs in the Pathfinder courts had reduced by half.
The model is to be expanded to four additional Designated Family Judge areas – Wolverhampton, Worcester, Stoke-on-Trent and Hampshire and the Isle of Wight – by the end of the 2025/2026 financial year.
Comment
In view of how positive the MoJ is about the Pathfinder, we’re surprised it’s being rolled out to other courts so slowly. While the whole of Wales is being included, only a handful of English court areas are mentioned.
We’re also surprised that an evaluation over three years didn’t pay any attention to the views and experiences of families or even their representatives, nor did it look at whether Pathfinder cases produce anything different in outcomes than the usual system. Of course, Cafcass reporters observing that children and families are better served under the Pathfinder is a very strong indicator that things were going well. However, while it’s likely that parties didn’t want to spend a lot of time in court themselves, a finding that staff were happier to be spending less time there doesn’t really tell us much about the effectiveness of the process. It’s a shame the interviews are so old, as a more recent dip into professional views could have updated those early impressions.
These aren’t criticisms of the research team, who were obviously given a very tight brief, but no direct family experience and ignoring the nature of the actual orders made, does lead to the thought that this study was a missed opportunity to reassure the public that the family justice system is moving in the right direction.
Image: thanks Lenabem-Anna J at flickr
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