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How Do County Courts Share the Care of Children

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How Do County Courts Share the Care of Children HOW DO COUNTY COURTS SHARE THE CARE OF CHILDREN BETWEEN PARENTS? FULL REPORT May 2015 Dr Maebh Harding, University of Warwick Dr Annika Newnham, University of Reading ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to express our gratitude to a number of people whose support and encouragement made this project possible. We are extremely grateful for the funding provided by the Nuffield Foundation and for the support and expert insight given by Sharon Witherspoon and Teresa Williams. We are also grateful to Frances Bright for her help in the production of this report and her advice on dissemination of the project’s findings. We would like to thank HMCTS for granting us permission to access the court files and in particular to Adam Lennon. We would also like to thank Denis Jones from Cafcass for his assistance and advice. We are extremely grateful to the court staff at the five locations visited in the report for locating the files and facilitating our visits. Throughout the project we have had the privilege of substantive and methodological guidance from our Advisory Group and would like to express our gratitude to Mavis Maclean (Oxford) Robert George (Oxford), Phillippa Newis (Gingerbread), Ross Jones (Families Need Fathers), David Allison (Family Law in Partnership LLP), Michelle Diver (Ministry of Justice) and Sarah Quartermain (Ministry of Justice) for their valuable insights. Additional thanks are extended to Professor Joan Hunt, Professor Judith Masson and Jo Miles who provided helpful comments on early drafts of the full report. Finally we must thank our colleagues at the University of Portsmouth, University of Warwick and the University of Reading for supporting the completion of our work on the project. The Nuffield Foundation is an endowed charitable trust that aims to improve social well-being in the widest sense. It funds research and innovation in education and social policy and also works to build capacity in education, science and social science research. The Nuffield Foundation has funded this project, but the views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Foundation. www.nuffieldfoundation.org CONTENTS Glossary ................................................................................................................................................... 4 1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 5 1.1 The Legal Background ............................................................................................................................... 5 1.2 Rationale for the Study ............................................................................................................................. 6 1.3 Aims of the Study ..................................................................................................................................... 7 1.4 Methodology ............................................................................................................................................ 8 1.5 Report Outline .......................................................................................................................................... 8 2 Why do Parents Come to Court? - Analysing Applications .............................................................. 10 2.2 Who applied for what? ........................................................................................................................... 10 2.3 Reasons given by the applicants for coming to court ............................................................................. 11 2.5 Use of Mediation .................................................................................................................................... 16 2.6 Reality of Care at the time of the Application ........................................................................................ 20 2.7 DV allegations and Child safety concerns at the time of application ..................................................... 22 2.8 Analysis: What did the parents want a court order to do? .................................................................... 27 2.9 Conclusions: Is court adjudication needed? ........................................................................................... 34 3 Reaching a solution: the Court Process ........................................................................................... 35 3.1 The Private Law Programme in our Sample Courts ................................................................................ 35 3.2 Safeguarding Children ............................................................................................................................ 38 3.3 Dealing with allegations of Domestic Violence ...................................................................................... 42 3.4 Children’s Wishes ................................................................................................................................... 46 3.5 Mediation ............................................................................................................................................... 49 3.6 Legal Aid Funding and Litigants in person .............................................................................................. 50 3.7 How long did cases take? ....................................................................................................................... 51 3.8 Funding for Experts ................................................................................................................................ 53 4 Analysis of Outcomes....................................................................................................................... 56 4.2 What were the formal outcomes? ......................................................................................................... 56 4.1 How many consent orders were made? ................................................................................................. 60 4.3 How successful were applicants? ........................................................................................................... 61 4.4 The role of the status quo ...................................................................................................................... 70 4.5 Allegations of child welfare and domestic violence ............................................................................... 75 4.6 Analysis: Does gender matter? ............................................................................................................... 80 5 Court Condoned Timeshare Patterns .............................................................................................. 82 5.1 Overnight Contact .................................................................................................................................. 84 5.2 Daytime Only, Direct Contact Category .................................................................................................. 91 5.3 Irregular Contact Cases ........................................................................................................................... 95 5.4 Supervised and Monitored Contact ........................................................................................................ 95 5.5 No Direct Contact Cases ......................................................................................................................... 98 5.7 Time Patterns, Domestic Violence and Child Welfare Concerns .......................................................... 106 6 The Non-Parent Cases .................................................................................................................... 110 6.2 Grandparent applications for Contact .................................................................................................. 110 6.3 Use of residence orders to facilitate kinship care ................................................................................ 111 6.4 Analysis: The use of Residence Orders in facilitating Kinship care ....................................................... 120 6.5 Discussion: The Dividing Line between Public and Private Child Law .................................................. 123 7 Conclusions .................................................................................................................................... 128 Appendix 1: Methodology .................................................................................................................. 133 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................ 140 GLOSSARY c100 Form The application form used by parents and others who sought Section 8 orders. In the longest-running cases the old c1 form had been used. Cafcass The Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service Children’s Services The Local Authority social workers that were involved in many of our cases due to child protection related concerns. Directions Hearing A shorter hearing to monitor a case’s progress and decide on the next steps. Typically 15 minutes. Ex Parte A hearing is held without notice to the respondent, often due to feared domestic violence or abduction. It is always followed by a hearing where both parties are present. Fact-finding hearing A hearing to investigate allegations of domestic
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