Written evidence (CFA0061)
HOUSE OF LORDS CHILDREN AND FAMILIES ACT 2014 SELECT COMMITTEE INQURY
A Children and Families Act 2022 should include mandatory reporting in the case of suspected emotional and psychological abuse towards a child caused by a parent or caregiver. This should be a statutory requirement of all schools, officials, Health Officials etc. This should be especially relevant where the child is being prevented or obstructed by one parent from having access to another parent. This should occur in the earliest possible stages before ‘alienation’ can take root in the child and they lose access to a parental figure.
A presumption of shared care in the case of families separating to give the children the best chance at life with input of both their equally valuable parents. Mothers should not automatically be given priority as the most important resident parent, this is a discriminatory and outdated presumption and can cause a lot of harm.
Of course, in the cases of safeguarding or cases of abuse this needs to be thoroughly investigated at the earliest opportunity to be acknowledged or ruled out – where there is no evidence of this a presumption of shared care needs to be put in place like the very successful programmes in Sweden and Finland. Swedish stats:
No, the family court system is terrible, it does not operate with the attachment needs of the child in mind, cases last too long, the court is slow to act and support alienating parents by reducing time with safer more stable target parents thus leaving the child in an emotionally and psychologically abusively damaging household too long. Family court6 Judges and court officials and child social care workers are largely untrained and have no knowledge or training in children and families mental health or child attachments so judgments tend to be counterproductive and not in the Childs best interests at all.
Fact findings need to be earlier and compulsory to assess the situation form the outsets. Perjury and false allegations brought to court need to be criminalised and dealt with harshly or they will just continue out of court or railroad court cases damaging children.
Court orders must be strictly enforced with harsh penalties if they are not followed. Currently around 1% of court orders are enforced- which make court orders and parenting plans not worth the paper they are written on.
The current system is not fit for purpose, UK Family Court and UK Governments need to look at the Israeli family court justice system model headed by Phillip Marcus to get a blueprint of a highly successful child focused system based on mental health and therapeutic methodology for all members of a separating family. This is a successful system. There are expert teams in the UK available to work with UK government to put this into action now.
For more information and to watch the only official professionally accredited training course that ALL child professionals and family court officials dealing with child and family cases should watch explaining these issues - at https://www.caftt.co.uk/ or contact
Enquiries@caftt.co.uk or registration@caftt.co.uk this course explains in great detail what does and what does not work and will greatly enhance your research for an improved and functional Children and Families Act 2022 with regards to separated parents.
How has the Act interacted with other reforms to the family justice system, for example the changes to legal aid?
The changes to legal aid have incentivised parents (often the resident parent) to make false allegations of DA to qualify for legal aid.
‘New figures show a 30% rise in orders made after legal aid was axed in everything but abuse cases in family courts in 2012.’ 2018
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-44628179
Domestic Abuse charities such as Woman’s aid who are financially profiting from high numbers of filed domestic abuse claims are encouraging women to make false claims to gain legal aid and free housing. Women how fill in forms with DA charities do not need to provide evidence and often lie and cheat on their forms to game the system. Please listen to- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo_LD0kCPhw
Please also see Terry Whites report - https://youtu.be/URHDXgcPcFo
‘Terry White has extensive experience of analysing reports written with the intention to deceive by corrupt regimes all over the world, for example those prepared by Russian oligarchs or African despots. The Ministry of Justice Report 'Assessing the Risk of Harm to Children and Parents in Private Law Children's Cases' bears all the hallmarks of these reports. Terry has applied for Judicial Review to challenge the process followed by the MoJ. The review, if allowed, will be heard in about a year's time. Terry dissects the report to show how it fails to be a trustworthy or reliable description of the experiences of those in the family court and why it is not a scientifically based, statistically sound analysis deserving of respect or credibility. This is another missed opportunity for children’.
No things need to happen to sooner for children to be protected.
Only trained experts should be used in the relevant fields.
Mediation is useless with a personality disordered parent to content with therefore psychological evaluations need to be mandatory and early on.
This is not enough, a presumption of shared parenting from the offset in the absence of safeguarding risks is better. ‘Involvement’ is too vague and allows too much room for interpretation.
I first hand witnessed –‘a father’ who was scoffed at by a family judge in family court who despite their being no safeguarding issues and the father clearly being a target parent of by an alienating mother who was resident parent – laughed at him out loud and said ‘ Shared care? not a chance, this is the UK we don’t do that here!’
That Judge was ebullient, rude and didn’t conduct the case properly and was discriminating against a parent because of his gender with no thought of the Childs attachment needs or wellbeing in mind. That child who is only 5 still suffers today because of the severe lack in the family court and child social care system.
April 2022