Children can wait “well over a year” for the family justice system to determine their future, an independent review panel has found.
An interim report by the Family Justice Review Panel found that too many private law disputes are ending up in court, that caseloads are rising and that there is little joint planning between the different organisations.
The panel’s chair, David Norgrove said, in his introduction: “There is distrust, with now a vicious circle of layers of checking and scrutiny that lead to work being done less well in the first place.There are few means of mutual learning and feedback. The lack of IT and management information is astonishing.”
The panel’s interim recommendations were to set up a Family Justice Service headed by a national Family Justice Board that would draw the function of agencies together, while local Family Justice Boards replaced the existing “plethora of arrangements”. It called for specialist judges to hear cases from start to finish, and for court social work services to form part of the Family Justice Service, subsuming the role of Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service.
It recommended less reliance on unnecessary expert reports when these are not in the best interests of the child; that a bespoke timetable be established for each child’s situation to minimise the damage caused by uncertainty; and that separating couples with children be assessed for mediation and given information on the impact of conflict on the children.
It also recommended that parenting agreements be drafted to set out contact arrangements for grandparents.
Stuart Ruff, solicitor at Thomas Eggar, said: “Grandparents are often forgotten in any separation and a huge number of grandparents lose contact with their grandchildren.”
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