Press
Release 21 June 2004
FAMILY
COURTS: A FUNDAMENTAL REFORM
New Approaches
to Contact, the family policy review agency, applauds the Government
Green Paper on Parental Separation. The proposals mark a historic
shift in legal and social policy.
Director
Oliver Cyriax said: “The proposals entail a timely transition
to the two-parent model of family justice. This is progress of the
first magnitude. The key principle that children need an ongoing
relationship with both parents lies at the heart of the Government’s
new thinking.
The Pilot
Projects, to be tested in the courts, incorporate a benign innovation
of prime importance to every separating family. The Courts will
issue ‘Parenting Plans’ embodying a formal recognition
that children need the ‘frequent and continuous contact' recommended
by the child development experts.
The Green
Paper’s key development is the decision to use Parenting Plans
to outline what ‘full and frequent’ contact actually
means in terms of time. This is exactly what parents need to know.
At last the Courts can make clear that reasonable contact is not
just two hours a fortnight; it means substantial overnight stays.
Parents can be told, before litigation starts, what sort of orders
the Court is liable to make in various categories of case.
This
crucial step, for which the professionals have lobbied for years,
delivers on the intentions of the Children Act 1989: “to encourage
both parents to continue to share in their children's upbringing,
even after separation or divorce.”
The Pilot
Project will give parents the responsibilities they want. It will
give children the rights they need. Provided the Pilots are properly
constructed, the adoption of time-linked Parenting Plans could save
years of litigation for tens of thousands of families each year.
This
Green Paper is more than just tinkering with the system. It is a
radical overhaul. The burden of proof is reversed. Procedure is
reversed. The presumption of reasonable contact is created. Under
the new system, normal contact should be reinstated before the first
hearing.
The Government
has opened the door to reconfiguration of the legal system without
the need for primary legislation. Given sound management, the Government
can now deliver real structural reform. This is a new blueprint
for the family courts and a new platform for social policy. The
Government is to be congratulated.”
ENDS
Further
information available on application; 020 8748 1081
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