Changing times - Report looks at finding a better way to achieve good co-parenting between separated parents
A new report entitled: What about me? Reframing Support for Families following Parental Separation by The Family Solutions group highlights the need to view separation and divorce differently. It places the needs of the child/children at the centre of the process.
The report rightly observes that the current processes for issue resolution (in or out of court) tend to operate largely for parents.
The strong central theme of the report was to encourage family justice professionals, including family solicitors, to place the child’s long-term welfare and rights, ever more firmly at the centre of their considerations. This calls for support which is of a different order: a “different support which is holistic and relational.”
This is all the more important in view of the immense and increasing pressure on the family court system.
The President of the Family Division of HMCTS, Sir Andrew McFarlane, said: ‘The number of these private law applications continues to increase, and the trend is that more and more parents see lawyers and the court as the first port of call in dispute resolution, rather than as the facility of last resort as it should be in all cases where domestic abuse or child protection are not an issue’.