Category Archives: social work

‘What went wrong’ – are we asking ourselves the right questions?

Some commentary I’ve heard and read in the wake of the murder of Sara Sharif features the familiar questions that have been asked after so many other child deaths – ‘What went wrong? And ‘Why does this keep happening?’

This post is only concerned with the role of the Family Court. It doesn’t consider what happened after the Family Court was last involved in 2019, and the role of other agencies such as the school and social services – there are lots of good questions about that, but those are for another day and another blog post.

So what about †he Family Court? Some people clearly think its self evident from the basic facts that something went wrong: the Family Court knew there were allegations against him, approved her placement with him and now she’s dead. Ergo, something went wrong. Of course, it isn’t actually that simple.

In his ‘anonymous judge’ judgment arising from the media’s application to access documents from the Family Court relating to decisions made about Sara and her siblings (which is due to be dealt with on appeal next week) Williams J appears to suggest that perhaps nothing ‘went wrong’ and the system was working as it always does and that the decisions made by Sara’s judge(s) were typical and likely to have been made regardless or which individual judge had the case in their list on the day. It probably isn’t that simple either.

I’ve read both Williams J’s comments (which are better informed than mine as he has seen the documents) and this account in the Guardian, from journalists who had also seen at least some of the same documents (I’ve also read various other accounts in the media but this one is pretty much as detailed as it gets). It’s difficult to know what to make of these two very different perspectives without sight of the documents themselves, but I have questions that are not answered either by the journalists summaries of what they have read or by Williams J’s assurances that it’s all pretty normal fare (my summary). For me, this case, and others like it, raises a heap of complicated questions that don’t all pull in the same direction. I don’t know whether any individual or ‘the system’ did anything out of keeping with accepted good practice. Perhaps. Perhaps not.

But, leaving aside for one moment what the ‘typical hypothetical judge’ might have done in those earlier care proceedings, or, if confronted with the decision about her residence in 2019 – I am readily prepared to accept that accepted good practice, or established real life practice (perhaps not the same because resource limitations in every system force a gap between the ideal and the real) could be improved.

Even if Williams J is right that there is nothing surprising in the way the Family Court responded to the evidence before it in this case, bearing in mind the legal framework (and resource backdrop) – a powerful retort to that might be this: if this is what the system considers ‘good enough’ then it needs an overhaul, because with proper resource and attention the risks ought to have been obvious and a different decision might have been made. And in a way, the Williams judgment seems to sort of hint at that by referring to resources. ‘If you want us to do things differently or better, fund us properly’ it appears to say. The family justice system is, like many other of our systems and institutions, suffering badly from underfunding and you would be hard pressed to say that isn’t so.

It will likely be said during the appeal next week that a lot of what is in Williams J’s judgment, including his review of his predecessors handling of the cases involving Sara, is irrelevant to the question of the identification of the judge. There is authority to support that being so. But, regardless of whether they were a necessary and proper commentary to include in a judgment, some of the comments on the system are illuminating (whether one agrees with them or not). I suspect that they will resonate with many family lawyers and judges – the sense that judges (just like others in the family justice system) are acting in good faith and doing their level best with inadequate resources and time, is strongly felt. If we are honest with ourselves, we all know that the perfect makes way for the adequate in the Family Court just as it does in any institution – and sometimes it makes way for the inadequate, as judgments arising from successful appeals tell us. We are not working in a perfect system and of course individual judges are not personally responsible for the resource environment in which they must operate. The fear underlying the remarks of Williams J is that the naming of the judge will result a witch hunt which attempts to make an individual responsible for systemic issues. I don’t think he is alone in that anxiety and I understand it. The new Chair of the Bar made a similar point in her powerful inaugural address this week – that the family justice system is important, and can play a crucial part in reducing violence against women and girls – but only if it is properly resourced.

Whenever I am thinking about the role of the judge and how they are (mis)understood in the world at large – and what we should and should not expect from them – I remind myself of the wisdom and humility of former High Court Judge Sir Mark Hedley. Today I pulled down my copy of ‘The Modern Judge – Power, Responsibility and Society’s Expectations’ again to locate these words:

Judges are, however, united in one view: their own fallibility. None of us is right all the time; no human being ever is. You cannot do the job I did for very long without that becoming very apparent. Humility is an essential quality of the good judge, not always easy

Later, in a chapter which considers the relationship between truth, proof and justice (and our fact finding process) Sir Mark says this:

Could all this be done better? Of course the answer must be ‘yes’, and we need to ensure that proof and truth more exactly coincide. However, the inherent contradictions and fallibilities of our own judicial system, not to mention the activities of those who for their own reasons are anxious to evade the truth, probably mean that things cannot be done radically differently. Society commits to judges both great power and great responsibility in the individual case, and does so in what should be the full knowledge of the inherent fallibility of any human system of justice. Thus, if as a society we are to have a politically and morally acceptable system, we must have an uncorrupted, well trained, and independent judiciary who enjoy the trust of that society.

And so we come back full circle to the need to ensure public trust in the judges in whom we vest so much power. Which of course is why the ‘anonymous judge issue’ matters. To command respect and maintain trust you have to understand power and be ready to be accountable. But the anonymity point is a matter the Court of Appeal will look at next week and not the subject of this post.

In any event, it isn’t just about names. Trust is also build by being willing to permit, to take part in a more sophisticated public discussion, that focuses on lessons, on learning and on change rather than personal blame – and it is also built by individuals within the system being willing and able to listen and hear uncomfortable perspectives. That is as important as the identity of the judge.

So, the real topic of this post is to prompt some thought about what we as a society are asking or expecting Family Courts to do on our behalf? It is easy when a child is murdered to fall into the trap of demanding, expecting the powers that be – whether that is the state or government generically, or specifically social services or the Family Court – to prevent all child abuse and murder. A great ideal but it takes only a moment’s thought to know this is unattainable. That doesn’t mean of course that we shouldn’t strive to reduce, as far as possible, the numbers of such terrible events. We should absolutely strive to do so, and scrutiny of what we did last time around – and why – and whether we might be able to change and improve our responses next time – is an essential part of that task.

But what I think gets lost in these ‘well obviously something went wrong in the Family Court’ comments – is that the Family Court is not actually tasked with removing all risk. That just isn’t the job of the judge and if we think it is we are starting from the wrong place. The Family Court judge is tasked with identifying, evaluating and managing risk and trying somehow to predict the risks, to weigh up the options and to find best outcome. Its job is to do so based upon the evidence it has available. There is no crystal ball. Inevitably that evaluation, made by humans and based on the evidence produced by humans, will sometimes turn out to be ‘wrong’ in the sense that something awful still happens. Something that was a known risk, serious but unlikely ever to actually happen, will in fact happen in a low proportion of cases. That is part and parcel of how risk management works. One of the continuing failures of the family justice system is the near absolute failure to track long term outcomes for the children judges make long term decisions for. Bar in cases of child death most judges never know if their decision turned out well for the child or not. Which makes it pretty hard for individual judges or the system to learn from its mistakes.

Back to the role of the individual judge, though. To put it another way – we would not want judges to only make decisions that produced a ‘no risk’ outcome. If they did then vast numbers of children would be removed from slightly flaky but loving parents, and would suffer all the inevitable harm that such separation entails, all to avoid a small chance that their mum’s or their dad’s flakiness might one day result in significant harm. Not only would we not want this outcome as a society, it isn’t what the law provides for anyway. Written into our domestic law and the European Convention on Human Rights are the core requirements of necessity and proportionality. The Children Act 1989, which is the backbone of decisions made by judges on these difficult topics, includes (of course) harm suffered and risk of harm, parenting capacity etc – but these are not the only issues to consider and evaluate and nor should they be. It was precisely to ensure that sledgehammers were not used to crack nuts that Parliament took care to restrict the ability of the state to swoop in and remove children from their family altogether by s31 of the Children Act, which introduces a threshold or gateway minimum level of risk that has to be crossed before such action is permitted – and all of that prior to an up to date evaluation of risk to allow for parental change and a balancing of pros and cons. (With regard to Sara’s case and how this applied and was all carried out, I don’t think there is yet enough information in the public domain to comment meaningfully, though there are some obvious questions in my mind, and so I am talking in quite a general sense here.)

Again, Sir Mark Hedley has some insight to offer. Firstly, in the familiar words of Re L from his judgment 2006:

Society must be willing to tolerate very diverse standards of parenting, including the eccentric, the barely adequate and the inconsistent. It follows too that children will inevitably have both very different experiences of parenting and very unequal consequences flowing from it. It means that some children will experience disadvantage and harm, whilst others flourish in atmospheres of loving security and emotional stability. These are the consequences of our fallible humanity and it is not the provenance of the State to spare children all the consequences of defective parenting. In any event, it simply could not be done. … It would be unwise to a degree to attempt an all embracing definition of significant harm. One never ceases to be surprised at the extent of complication and difficulty that human beings manage to introduce into family life.

And more recently, Sir Mark was interviewed on Radio 4 shortly after the verdicts and before there had been time for much news coverage of the Family Court’s role, and he explained to listeners that family judges don’t have some roving power to do whatever they like, such as removing children whenever they want – they have to work within the framework that Parliament has given them. He was talking about the fact that it is social services who have the primary role to intervene by applying to the court if they thing there is a risk of significant harm (care proceedings), and that the most a court can do in a case brought between parents (private law proceedings) where the judge is worried about the risk of significant harm is to order a specific type of report asking social services for their view on whether there is such a risk (s37 Children Act 1989).

Most cases before the Family Court involve some level of risk: Domestic abuse. Emotional harm. Adult conflict. Poverty. Mental health difficulties. Substance abuse. Criminality. One or more of those will feature to a greater or lesser degree in almost every single one of the tens of thousands of cases before the court each year, and with each comes risk of harm (some serious, some trivial, some very likely, some remotely likely). Where the local authority think the risk is likely to be significant they should bring care proceedings, which the judge will then deal with. The job of deciding how much risk is too much risk is not a science and in many cases there is not an obvious ‘right’ answer, but this is nonetheless what judges (and social workers) have to do every day. And it’s really tough. Every judge knows what Hedley articulated so clearly – it is impossible to get it right every time. And that in trying to protect you can end up causing more harm than good.

I sometimes hear social workers talk about ‘holding risk’, although these days they more often seem to operate from a defensive position, trying desperately to eradicate all risk. Last week I saw a comment on LinkedIn from a social worker articulating why this is problematic. Here is an extract from Richard Devine’s post entitled ‘Why It Isn’t My Job to Keep Children Safe’ (with kind permission):

At first glance, keeping children safe seems like an obvious description of our job. It’s even in the job title—child protection. We protect children from harm, and intuitively, the inverse of protecting children from harm is to keep them safe.

But I’ve come to realise that this framing is flawed. Keeping children safe is not our job.

This isn’t to say that safety isn’t important—it absolutely is. However, the idea that it’s solely our responsibility is an unattainable ideal. If we measure our success by whether a child is entirely safe, we set ourselves up for futility and burnout, because no matter how hard we work, we will almost certainly fall short.

Our job is not to guarantee a child’s safety but to help parents ensure their children do not experience significant harm.

This shift in perspective is profound. It acknowledges that some level of risk and harm is inevitable, even in the lives of children we work with. Our interventions aim to reduce significant harm, not to eliminate all forms of risk—a distinction that is critical yet often overlooked.

I’ve quoted Richard because this applies as much to judges as it does to social workers. And when we ask questions about what happened in Sara’s case, and in the many others like it, we do need I think to hold in mind that the job of the judge is NOT to keep every child safe all the time. It is to promote their overall welfare, keeping safety and risk in mind as important but not the only factors. It is to choose the best of a range of options – sometimes each one of them involving a degree of imperfection and risk. If we wanted to keep every child safe all the time we would both need to change the law and to resource the system in an entirely different way. And I’m not sure we would much like the results if we did.

There is always scope for improvement by the Family Court in how it gathers information in individual cases and in how it identifies, manages and evaluates risk in those cases. It is absolutely legitimate and necessary to be asking probing questions. And the court should welcome those questions, because they will help us all to do better, and to be the best we can be. But we should never forget the inevitable limitations of a system run by imperfect humans for other imperfect humans, and that any such system is only as good as the tools and the rules it operates with and within.

One further thinking point from me – in 2017 the then President Sir James Munby, following a child death where the Family Court had been involved (I think that of Ellie Butler) issued Guidance around ‘Judicial Cooperation with Serious Case Reviews’. Although Serious Case Reviews have now been replaced with Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews, the core point remains good: for sound constitutional reasons judges cannot actively participate in such reviews by interview or comment or explanation. They can and should provide all relevant material to assist the review, and when any review report identifies learning points for the Family Court, the President will issue Practice Guidance to effect the necessary change in practice.

Paragraph 10 is very direct:

The judiciary is not an agency in the same way that local authorities or the police are agencies. Nor is an individual judge. Judges have a distinct constitutional role and function. It is a fundamental principle that judges do not comment on the decisions of other judges outside the appellate process. This is why it would be inappropriate for an IMR of a judicial decision to be conducted; it would, effectively, be one judge (or group of judges) commenting upon the decisions of another judge outside the proper appellate process. It would be even less appropriate for an of?cial (including for this purpose an of?cial in the Judicial Of?ce or in the Judicial Press Of?ce) to seek to comment on a judicial decision. This principle evolved in order to protect the rule of law – it reinforces the idea that the only way to challenge a judicial decision is to do so in court, not to seek to undermine it outside the court process.

Even if Sara’s Judge(s) is/are named they won’t be able to tell us any more than is available through scrutiny of the materials before them and their judgments tell us. Since judges cannot be permitted to explain or comment upon their decision (other than through the reasons given in their judgment) it is all the more important that documents should be made available in order to inform understanding of what happened, why and whether any learning points arise. The media have been provided with a raft of documents, but at the moment the reporting I’ve seen derived from those documents probably only scratches the surface of what we might need to know before drawing meaningful conclusions.

Kirstie gets a telephone call from the social

I had a call earlier. Did I want to do a TV interview about Kirstie Allsopp and child protection? Er…on the Sunday afternoon of the August bank holiday weekend? To be quite honest, no. I’ve not got my face on and I’m in the middle of prepping for a trial, which involves some actual child protection issues (such is the traditional August bank holiday weekend activity for us lawyers – though we did have a barbecue like a normal family yesterday).

I’d vaguely noted it on the radio as I snoozed before getting up, briefly raising an eyebrow at the fact that a social worker making a telephone call to a parent had made the national news, and then briefly raised the other one at the insistence of the LA involved that they take EVERY child protection referral VERY SERIOUSLY (their statement was read as if in CAPS), before rolling over and continuing my snooze. I wasn’t wild about going on tv to talk about such a non-story. Those who wish to read about the non-story may do so here (or elsewhere).

But every time I open up social media for a bit of light relief from the grimness of my prep, there it is. Someone outraged at the treatment of Kirstie by ridiculous social workers, someone ridiculing Kirstie for her outrageously risky parenting, someone else making a point about class and entitlement. So I guess, it is a story after all.

May I introduce a soupçon of legal insight to this ‘conversation’?

Section 47 of the Children Act 1989 (not the Children’s Act, if you care). It applies to all local authorities in England and Wales, and all children living in their area. Even those whose parents are loaded, or celebrities or both.

Here it is – you can read it in full on the legislation.gov.uk website. But the key bits are:

Where a local authority [social services] are informed that a child who lives…in their area have reasonable cause to suspect that a child who lives…in their area is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm, the authority shall make, or cause to be made, such enquiries as they consider necessary to enable them to decide whether they should take any action to safeguard or promote the child’s welfare.

So, if a genuinely concerned person with legitimate worry, or a busybody, or a keyboard warrior or a malicious person calls social services and says ‘hey social services, I think this child is at risk because x’, that triggers a statutory process. Social services can’t just ignore it unless it is immediately and clearly obvious that there is no reasonable cause to suspect the child is likely to suffer harm. They have to check it out. For the avoidance of doubt, the identity or status of the parent is not a good reason to decide to ignore a child protection referral.

One assumes from her reported response that Kirstie has not had the pleasure of a call from social services before. Lucky her. Where a referral is made about a family who is not known to social services a telephone call is an entirely predictable and proportionate response. ‘Let’s check this out’ say social services. A simple telephone call is often enough to satisfy them that there is in fact no reasonable cause to believe there is a risk of significant harm to the child, and that will be that, Particularly so if the parent is able and willing to explain the context that might not be apparent from the referral.

From the responses online its clear that some people hold the view that it is OBVIOUS Kirstie is guilty of BAD PARENTING. However it is also clear that others think it is OBVIOUS that she has done nothing wrong. Some (and I’m probably in this camp because i’m a lawyer and a parent of two very different teenagers), would say IT DEPENDS on the specifics (the child, the travel arrangements, the safeguards etc).

Even if you disagree with me on that, it is clear that there are a range of reasonable views about allowing a 15 year old to travel abroad without a parent. Which is probably why social services didn’t feel able to simply write off the referral without at least making a quick telephone call. That call from ‘the social’ is genuinely a very frightening experience for a vulnerable parent without Kirstie’s background, resources and platform. Kirstie reportedly felt sick when she got the call, but I doubt very much social services will be swooping in to remove her now 16 year old, safely returned young person to a place of safety, as often happens in the sorts of cases I see day in day out (and which I dare say her own local authority will be prioritising). If Kirstie felt sick, imagine how parents with real problems feel?

It’s not clear from the material I’ve read whether social services were satisfied that they should ‘NFA’ the referral as a result of that telephone call, but I’d expect them to be considering things like the age of the young person (he was almost 16 when he went and 16 just after return), his maturity, who was travelling with him (a 16 y/o companion), what arrangements were in place (funding, back up plans, accommodation, ground rules), and – given that he is now back and 16, whether or not any purpose could possibly be served by further involvement with the family.

How one sensibly exercises parental responsibility to keep a young person safe, whilst also fostering independence is a tricky balancing act – different parents will make different decisions based on how risk averse they are and their knowledge of their child.

Whilst it’s not for me to prejudge the outcome of the referral, it does seem unlikely to go much further. Regardless of that however, I can’t really see any basis for the apparent criticism of the LA for simply making a call to find out how this particular decision was made (so far). s47 is there for very good reason. Sometimes – often in fact – children finally get protection because of a referral from a stranger. Sometimes the referral seems like something and nothing but it is one loose thread that, when pulled, unravels a whole tangle of issues. I’m not suggesting that is the case with Kirsty, but it is the reason why local authorities – rightly – have to do a bit of due diligence when a referral comes in.

Whether you would let your 15 year old go on this trip, it would, I think, be a tall order to suggest that a well planned trip undertaken by two reasonably mature and well resourced 15/16 y/os gave rise to the sort of risk of significant harm that justifies state interference above and beyond a telephone call.

However, I am confident that if I am wrong in my guess we will all be finding out soon enough (and then I’ll tell you what happens when the LA isn’t satisfied there are no reasonable grounds). I’m sure the now 16 year old son will be absolutely thrilled at all this fuss.

Anyway, it’s a shame, isn’t it, that we can’t get so much airtime focused on the real stories playing out in family courts every day, stories both about children who need protecting from their parents, and parents who need protecting from one another or from the overreach of the state.

And on that note I’m back to my real work for a bit of relief from the awfulness of social media.

No Frills Justice – Part 2

This is part 2 of a post about my observations at Central London Family Court in September 2023.

In part 1 I described the first hearing I observed, Here I tell you about the second case I observed and make some general comments about my experience as a legal blogger.

So, back to the third floor of the CFC. At the end of part 1 I left you at the door of court as everyone in the first case had all dispersed…

 

Shortly after, the other 2pm case in the list is called on. The clerk has enthusiastically shooed me into court with one hand whilst shooing the parties away with the other, so I exchange a polite greeting with the judge and sit for a minute or so in awkward silence in court before the parties and their lawyers come in. This case is showing on the list as an interim care order removal hearing, but it takes me a few minutes to work out who is who and why the matter is at court.

 

I piece together that the case is about a child, Brianna*, approaching secondary school age who has been living with her grandmother under a special guardianship order for most of her childhood. Her mother is missing in action, thought to be street homeless, but her father is present at court with his mum, the special guardian grandmother. He has recently had a positive drug test for crack and other drugs, but is said to be seeking support. He lives with his mum and daughter and appears to have been quite involved. The last year has been a difficult year for the family because the grandmother and head of the household has developed a condition which affects her memory and ability to live independently. She now has a substantial care package to support the wider family in looking after her. She has come to court today with her daughter, Brianna’s aunt. The aunt has been given permission to sit in court beside her mum, and at times is invited to speak on her mother’s behalf, and to express her own views as a part of the family. Because the hearing has been arranged at short notice the grandmother doesn’t have a lawyer, though arrangements are put in train for that to be sorted before the next hearing. The aunt tells the judge that Brianna comes to stay with her on weekends, and she sees her daily, but her job means she is unable to look after her full time. Asked if her mother is able to speak on her own behalf, she says ‘maybe. She has moments’. The grandmother manages a few words: ‘Don’t like it but yeah Its best thing for [Brianna]. She was upset but not my fault I got this condition.’

 

The situation is desperately sad. The family have done their best to pull together as the situation has unfolded, but by the time they reach court it appears they all accept that it isn’t sustainable, and Brianna will need to move. On the horizon it seems, is a time when the grandmother will be unable to manage in her own home and will need to move, presumably to supported living.

 

The silver lining for Brianna is that she has some older siblings who live in the South West and who are cared for by a family friend. Brianna knows them and spends time with them in holidays and they can look after her. But it means a school move, and Brianna is anxious about that. The local authority want to share parental responsibility, which makes sense because it sounds as if there is some doubt that the grandmother can exercise her parental responsibility at all times.

 

The judge deals first with making sure that Brianna’s mother knows what is happening. He makes an order for the Department for Work and Pensions to provide any address they hold for the mother, although everyone is doubtful this will be a very effective way of finding the mother if she really is street homeless.

 

Next, he asks the local authority lawyer to summarise the position, as he knows the family won’t have had time to read the case summary. The barrister explains a bit about the background as described earlier, and is at pains to say that the grandmother has done a very good job until she fell ill, and that it recognises that the need for an order is through no fault of the grandmother. He explains that social services had been prepared to carry on with a plan of family and professional support until arrangements were able to be made for Brianna’s siblings and their carer to move to the London area in a few months time, but because of the working commitments of the father and his sister there were times when Brianna was alone with her grandmother, which were now felt not to be safe. They were seeking an order to be able to move Brianna to live with her siblings straight away, but on the basis that they would come back to the London area when able.

 

The judge was invited to grant the father parental responsibility given how involved he had been with Brianna, and to join him formally as a party. The judge made both orders.

 

The local authority acknowledged that, due to her difficulties, most discussions had been held with the adults in the family as a group rather than with the grandmother in her own right. The barrister suggested that her capacity to instruct a lawyer and to participate in the court case should be assessed before she is expected to put anything in writing formally.

 

The father’s lawyer indicated that whilst she formally acted on behalf of the father, she was instructed to put forward a view on behalf of the family as a whole too. Through her, the family acknowledged the concerns and that the needs of Brianna could not be fully met in the current situation. It was acknowledged that the grandmother’s likely move would place the father’s own accommodation at risk. He accepted the drug test results, though made clear that he did not use around the child. Understandably, he did not consent to the move, but he didn’t oppose it either. He was worried about the unresolved issues of schooling.

 

Although the outcome seemed pretty inevitable given what I’d heard of the issues and the family’s position, the judge was careful to make sure that the interim arrangements for education, contact and other matters were as clear as could be, and wanted to explore some confusion over the likely school and timing of a further move. He also made sure to satisfy himself that although there would be some disruption and uncertainty Brianna was not moving to complete strangers, but to family and people she viewed as family, and whose home she was familiar with.

 

The judge delivered a short judgment setting out the facts and the law. He made arrangements for a next hearing, with the new carer to be involved, and set the wheels in motion for assessment of her. To my surprise the LA said they only needed six weeks to do that.

 

The judge added a post script to the grandmother, acknowledging that she had been unable to fully participate and directing that at the next hearing the judge would specifically consider how she could be supported to be part of the proceedings.

 

Again, sorting out arrangements for me to report was pretty straightforward – the father was a little surprised at the suggestion I might report, because he had been involved in proceedings before where this did not happen. In this case the judge expressed some anxiety about a risk of identification of the family if I named the local authority, and I was happy to agree not to name them. Again, I don’t think the identity of the local authority matters to this pen picture of an ordinary account of an ordinary afternoon in Central London Family Court.

 

Legal blogging experience

 

On this occasion I attended without any real notice, but I did let the usher know just before lunch that I was planning to attend 2 hearings, and provided my paperwork to him in readiness (he was so keen to take the papers I was thrusting at him that he was almost gone before I had a chance to explain I was a legal blogger – I think he thought I was a solicitor handing in a case summary). We exchanged email addresses and within a few minutes I was told that the judge had ok’d my attendance. I introduced myself to the lawyers for both local authorities once signed in, in the expectation that they would cascade that information down to the other advocates who could take instructions (it can be intrusive to go knocking on the door of lawyers involved in discussions with family members, as well as hard to find all the right people!) but in fact this didn’t happen and so I decided to let some of the other lawyers know I was present when they were signing in. One said to me ‘what’s a legal blogger? Are you a lawyer?’, so I gave her the relevant rule to look at. There was no hostility or real objection to my attendance or reporting, and the judge handled my attendance smoothly and with minimal fuss. I’m confident my attendance didn’t detract from the parties’ ability to engage or the judge’s ability to deal with the cases.

 

I was able to obtain a copy of the relevant parts of the order confirming my permission to report without difficulty, although I did subsequently note that one order suggests the judge had granted permission for me to attend, which is not strictly correct. I was entitled to attend and nobody objected.

 

*The child’s name has been changed