Judicial training on contact

Viewed from the outside, the Family Law Division has the external trappings one would expect of a legal system: judges, QCs, lawyers, court buildings, procedures, listings, hearings, cases, documentation, paperwork, reports, files, court orders, fees and so on.

These attributes are the physical components of a system capable of producing case-outcomes: so far, good.

Next, what of the internal workings that produce those outcomes?

Those entering the family law system (private law) whether as professionals or parents find themselves in a featureless terrain. In broad terms, Section 8 applications go like this:

1.The Statute: Empty

- parents can apply for contact - with no indication of the best-interests outcome

2. Case-law: Empty

- every case is different

3. The Courts’ Experts: Empty

- Cafcass has no guidance on how much contact there should be in any type of case

4. Judicial training: every case is different

This system has run, unaltered, for 34 years, and resisted useful change for 27 years.

Click here to read the correspondence on the extent of judicial training. These exchanges dates to 2013. There is no reason to suppose things have changed: there is no guidance on the issue in dispute to train the judiciary in.