Why
are we afraid of seeing fair play ?
By Clare Dyer
Community
Care - 25th March 2004
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2004/03/25/44237/Why%2Bare%2Bwe%2Bafraid%2Bof%2Bseeing%2Bfair%2Bplay.html?key=WHY%2BAND%2BAFRAID%2BAND%2BSEEING%2BAND%2BFAIR%2BAND%2BPLAY
Give the British establishment an idea which is proved to be effective,
and what does it do? Timidly imposes the least effective part - and
then expresses surprise at the unsatisfactory outcome.
In this case,
it is the use of "fair play" parenting plans plus mediation
to reduce the number of protracted and bloody court battles between
couples over child contact.
The scheme has
worked well in Florida's family courts - not least
because it has triggered a cultural change. An appearance in court is
a last resort. Instead, parents are firmly and speedily steered towards
ancillary help. Unless an adult or children are at risk, the norm is
for a non-resident parent to have contacted at least one evening a week
and alternate weekends. Child support is expected on pain of imprisonment.
Mothers or fathers who refuse to comply with the agreement face penalties
that eventually may put them in jail.
Mediation is
used to help refine the agreement, not argue about whether access should
be permitted in the first place. Also, the adults are required to go
to parenting classes to encourage them to stop behaving like children
when their offspring move from one house to the other. Dud dads and
mums with addiction problems are propelled into programmes to help them
back on track. Jobs are found for the unemployed. In short, this is
a holistic approach enforced on parents to ensure that after a couple
separates, for the sake of the child, the family continues.
After a painfully
long period of consultation, what do we have here? A pussyfooting voluntary
exercise which, far from achieving the profound psychological change
that is required, will simply widen the chasm between warring parents.
The Department
for Education and Skills is overseeing three pilot projects. It is difficult
to see why the intransigent will co-operate simply because children's
minister Margaret Hodge has invited them to do so.
This could have
been the tipping point - a scheme with teeth that sharply reminds couples
that the child comes first. Instead, yet again, the ministerial fear
of being accused of interfering in the private lives of families means
the rock of reform, so near the brow of the hill, has rolled back, squashing
the spirit of thousands of children.
In Florida the
scheme is labelled "therapeutic justice". In its gutless application
here, it will be neither therapeutic nor just - simply a waste of money.
