EDIT March 29th – you can now read a transcript and listen to the podcast here. I was very pleased to be in the audience for Louise Tickle’s lecture on March 13th in Birmingham, organised by the Family Justice Council and with an impressive panel of Andrew Pack (AKA Suesspiciousminds), Dr John Simmonds of Coram/BAAF, […]
On Saturday October 28th 2017 we gathered again, this time in London, for the ‘oral installation performance’ about adoption and the problems caused by lack of honest and open conversation about its meaning and consequences. The main questions Pamela and I hoped to pose were these: Can we make happy families? Can we impose […]
I am grateful to this post from one of CPR’s readers, who is parent to an autistic child. She writes about her difficulties in getting help and support for her son and the problems families experience in a system which does not seem set up to identify difficulties and offer support. What happens when […]
This Practice Direction supplements FPR Part 12, and incorporates and supersedes the President’s Guidance in Relation to Split Hearings (May 2010) as it applies to proceedings for child arrangements orders. This is the updated PD12J from 2017. For a more general discussion of issues around violence in family proceedings see this post “Reporting Domestic Violence” Comments […]
The decision in J (A Child: Care Proceedings: Apportionment of Expert’s fees) [2017] EWFC B49 is mainly concerned with how to ensure the court gets help from expert witnesses now that their fees are subject to pretty stringent caps by the Legal Aid Agency (LAA -formerly Legal Services Commission or LSC) I set out the […]
EDIT DECEMBER 21st 2019. On Wednesday 18th December 2019 Ms Hewson was suspended from practice for 2 years with immediate effect after admitting two charges of professional misconduct. See this article from Legal Cheek for more details. I am not ‘glad’ this happened and I am certainly not ‘glad’ it took so long for the […]
– I am grateful for this guest post from Mansour Jumaa who discusses how the family courts could be more humane in their operation, by deriving benefit from the teachings, principles and practice of Humanistic Psychology. “None of us are as smart as all of us” (Japanese proverb) 1 Introduction 1.1 This brief article suggests that […]
Too long, didn’t read: No. This is a post by Sarah Phillimore But as ever, its more complicated that that. This is clearly an issue that generates strong feelings. If there is no bias in fact there is certainly a perception from many that bias exists. What is going on here? And what if anything […]
Who holds the risk, how risk is assessed and how brave or risk averse those who make decisions for children? This is a post by Sarah Phillimore On March 9th 2017 Lord Justice McFarlane delivered the first of the Bridget Lindley OBE Memorial Lectures. He began by paying tribute to the memory of Bridget Lindley […]
This post is my formal complaint about the activities of the organisation Justice for Families, which I made to its Chairman John Hemming on 8th January 2017. My name is Sarah Phillimore and I am a barrister specialising in child protection law. My concerns about Mr Hemming and his organisation are long standing. You can […]