What’s the story?

The reporting of complex family court judgments. We are grateful for this guest post from Sanchia Berg, a reporter for Radio 4’s Today programme. She covers major news stories and also delivers original journalism- notably in fields of Education, Immigration, History...

Adoption Statistics – again (part 2)

In part 1 we responded to a blog post by John Hemming on the Marilyn Stowe blog. We raised some queries which Mr Hemming answered in a blog on his own blog. It’s taken us a few days to respond, but here is what we think of that response.   Firstly,...

The journalist who believes that lawyers always lie?

In today’s Telegraph, Christopher Booker has written about a case where care and placement orders for two children were made in Rhyl Family Court in April 2014. You can read the judgment on Bailii here. In April, HHJ Gareth Jones said in his judgment: ‘The...

Full Fact

Full Fact is an independent, non-partisan, factchecking charity. They check claims made by politicians, the media and pressure groups, and stop misinformation spreading by pressing for corrections. They separate the facts from the spin and present our findings and...

Press reporting random scare stories helps no-one

A particularly irritating example of opaque reporting came up under #familylaw on twitter yesterday. According to this story in the Telegraph, Child whose parents played too many video games ‘removed from family home’ Social Services said to have believed...

Adoption Statistics – again

John Hemming, former MP, has recently written a blog post on the Marilyn Stowe blog, called Adoption –  A look at the statistics, in which he says :  In the year to 31 March 2014 5,050 children left care through adoption, and of these 2,400 were “non consensual”...

Transparency Toolkit

This toolkit was prepared by Alice Twaite and Lucy Reed in May 2015. It gives an overview of some transparency related issues in the Family Court. Download Toolkit You are free to use, copy and circulate it, but it does not contain legal advice and it may not be...