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 Financial Times – We commented on the Financial Times report, Lasting Power of Attorney: The Most Important £82 I’ve Ever Spent: Don’t leave key decisions about your future to the Court of Protection (paywall), in Everlasting Discussion of Lasting Powers of Attorney:

 

BBC Today Programme – We contextualised reports of ex-Court of Protection Judge Denzil Lush’s comments on LPA’s, including in Warning over power of attorney risks.  With thanks to guest-poster Victoria Butler Cole (@TorButlerCole), Heledd Wyn (@heledd_wyn) and regular Transparency Project contributor Barbara Rich (@barbararich_law) for Lasting Powers of Attorney in the news– a more detailed explanation:

 

The Times – @JamesTurner37 flagged this inaccuracy in the Times (hard copy):

 

The Daily Mail – headlined with Ryan Gigg’s Marriage is Over After Divorce Hearing last Friday.   That inaccurate heading was updated later in the day. Perhaps @JoFamilyLaw’s tweet to the Daily Mail had an impact?:

 

The Independent – We noticed this intended headline: Children at risk of abuse as social services reach breaking point, about new analysis from the Local Government Association (based on the Growing Places report published in July 2017), didn’t materialise in the morning (at least in the online version):

 

Transparency Positive:

 

BBC News  –  With a detailed report, Counselling domestic abusers cuts offending by third, say researchers, linking readers to important new ‘open access’ research on rates of success of a particular domestic violence perpetrators initiative. The research: Reducing the Harm of Intimate Partner Violence: Randomized Controlled Trial of the Hampshire Constabulary CARA Experiment by Strang, H., Sherman, L., Ariel, B. et al, was published in the Cambridge Journal of Evidence Based Policing (2017)):

 

 

NEWLY PUBLISHED CASES FOR EXPLANATION OR COMMENT

 

W (Children) [2017] EWFC 61 (17 August 2017) – We explained this decision to permit limited preliminary disclosure of evidence from family court proceedings for the purpose of litigation outside the family court in Family Court judge accused of misfeasance in public office by social worker he criticised:

 

Southend Borough Council v CO and DW [2017] EWHC 1949 (Fam) – We explained this interesting (but quite fact specific) High Court decision in Can parents publicly petition against care orders? Southend Borough Council  were refused an injunction to make parents remove an online petition against a care proceedings decision: 

 

Khuja v Times Newspapers Ltd [2017]; Southend Borough Council v CO [2017]; and Carmarthen County Council v Y and others [2017]  – David Burrows discussed transparency related issues from these recent cases. Rights: privacy, anonymity and freedom of expression on family cases is re-posted from DBFamilyLaw by kind permission of David Burrows) 

 

IN OTHER TRANSPARENCY NEWS

 

Towards a Family Justice Observatory –  We commented on this report of stakeholder consultation responses & next steps, and the urgent need for consistent, research-informed decision making in family court decisions:

 

Response from Cafcass to our comments on their new framework – Cafcass have responded by email to our comments. They have also published a further revised version of the Framework. We will be writing about this shortly.

 

 

Feature pic: Courtesy of Flickr Lauri Heikkinenon via Creative Commons licence – thank