It was the place where we all converged, at the centre of the social media map.

But it all seems to be crumbling now. I flirted with mastodon a little while ago. Nobody really had the energy for it and it was dull as ditchwater, with suffocating etiquette to learn. We hoped it would get better back on twitter (as I think it then still was). It didn’t. And this time it’s feels like a substantial exodus away from Elon world, many galvanised by their repulsion at the part X and those who use and control it, played in the misinformation and disorder.

For many lawyers it appears that the refusal to tackle misinformation and material inciting crime and disorder, means that X has become a positive threat to the rule of law. For some that means either that one must leave rather than support such a corrupting platform. For others it means they feel they need to stay to keep telling truth, correcting misinformation. This week has seen several posts from the elders of legal twitter about their decisions to leave X.

I feel both of those pulls. I don’t want to prop up X, which increasingly leaves me despairing. But nor do I want to abandon a space where voices that speak with reason, balance and from a place of knowledge are much needed.

Nor am I under any illusions that my staying or going will make any great difference to anything. I’m just one voice, and a pretty niche one at that. But those of us with a voice still have a choice to make.

I’m not sure yet what my ultimate choice will be. But I’m not prepared to flounce out in a rush. I’ve been on twitter for almost 16 years, for better or worse and somehow I’ve amassed 20,000 followers (poor deluded fools that they are). I enjoy the engagement, the ripostes, the challenge I get from those followers when I post. I don’t find those exchanges are drowned out by bots as others do. But in between those exchanges I am fed a diet of rubbish that is beyond depressing and makes me feel that it is futile to try and stop the rot, to try and use my voice to promote access to justice and public trust and confidence in our systems of law and order and dispute resolution, or even just to engage human to human at all. It is undoubtedly ever harder to stay, and less and less rewarding to do so than it has been in this past 15 years.

So, seeing that lots of those I enjoy engaging with are leaving, I have set up on Bluesky. I don’t want to be the left to turn the lights out on legal twitter. It seems nice, though I don’t know if nice is enough. I’ve found a lot of my legal twitter buddies relatively easily but worry it might be a bit clubby – it won’t be easy to replicate the much wider community I had on twitter.

Those of us who populated twitter at the outset, the first legal bloggers and tweeters, invested a lot of energy in demystifying and explaining the law and what lawyers do. We are not naive. We know it is an unending task, that most people don’t want to listen, many will wilfully misunderstand or misinterpret what we say in good faith, and that only a few will listen, absorb and appreciate the context we are trying to share.

I’ve been committed to public legal education (through twitter, through this blog, through The Transparency Project etc) for over 15 years, and I plan to carry on that task for as long as there is someone who wants to hear it. This is not the first time I’ve been thoroughly despondent, and wondered what the point was. Misinformation proliferates because its what people want to hear, because its easier to understand, to accept than the messy, nuanced truth. Its undoubtedly worse than it has ever been by some margin – it feels sometimes like people have lost the ability to discern fact from fiction, and have abandoned critical thinking.

But… if we don’t make the law and legal process accessible, understandable, relatable, to those who are willing and able to understand, we really cannot complain when people turn away from law and the rule of law and start making up their own rules, their own truth.

Anyway, like most lawyers, I’m in danger of disappearing up my own wazoo. Social media for me is also as much about pictures of cats and videos of pratfalls, about seeing the beauty and small moments in other peoples lives that they care to share, and about learning from others (especially non-lawyers) – as it is about promulgating the ‘special’ knowledge of the lawyer (ahem).

So on I shall go with my intoxicating infusion of crochet and law related content, boring and irritating lawyers and non-lawyers in equal measure. I plan to keep a foot in both camps at the moment, probably for the foreseeable future. We’ll see how things evolves, and what platform best matches the triad of reasons I do social media – to connect about law, to connect with lawyers and to keep connected with the real world and life outside the legal bubble. Who knows, I may even do a little bit more real life and a little less social media…

It’s been a while since I’ve managed a book review. Because I’m always too absorbed in the job.

I bought this book a couple of months ago, having read a review somewhere, and have been carrying it around in my backpack ever since. Unopened, naturally. There is always something more important.

Last Saturday was spent travelling to our holiday location in France. On Sunday I sat under a palm tree and read this book in one sitting. I wept all the way through. That possibly tells you something about how much I needed a holiday, but it tells you more about the power of this book. We do this job because we care about the children at the heart of the system. but we sometimes (often) become disconnected from the reality. Partly to cope, and partly because for most of us in the job our lived experience is nothing like the experience of a child in care (care experienced lawyers are few and far between).

Whilst we need our protective shell to survive, sometimes its important to reconnect with the reality.

What struck me most about this account of Ashley John-Baptiste’s childhood, was that his narrative was filled with well intentioned adults trying to do right by him, but somehow (with one or two exceptions) they failed either to really connect with his world or to make change for him. Compared with some of the horror stories we see and read about, Ashley endured comparatively few placement moves – each one of those moves in a different way contributed to a breaking of his trust in the adults who were in control of his life – to a lawyer like me, used to seeing chronologies showing children bouncing from placement to placement, becoming more and more dysregulated and disengaged, it would be easy to think ‘actually, he got off comparatively lightly’. Which on one level is true – on paper, few moves, relatively long lasting placements, limited overt complaint from the child. And yet. This book tells us that even this comparative stability for a child in foster care is really not good enough. Ashley learned to suppress his wishes and feelings, in order to avoid another move, to survive. And nobody seemed to notice, head down, tick, tick go the boxes. But a child isn’t a box to be ticked. And there is a sense (which I think the book occasionally acknowledges) that some of the adults did see more, and did go above and beyond box ticking, even if they struggled to bring Ashley along with them or to explain the whats and whys to him.

For all the things that adults got wrong for Ashley though, a few key actions made all the difference to him, ultimately getting him back in education, keeping him more or less on the straight and narrow and facilitating his escape to university. It’s clear that Ashley himself is the one that deserves the most credit for persevering and achieving the success and happiness that he now has, where many others would simply have foundered or spiralled.

Ashley John-Baptiste’s account of his life as a child in foster care reminded me of some important lessons I had forgotten, about the little things that make a difference to kids who can’t be with their parents. But it also made me think about a whole load of things that had never occurred to me before – the unintentional messages, the inadvertent but lasting impact of things said, done or not said and not done by the grown ups. The sense of never really belonging or being loved.  The sense of voicelessness and powerlessness – the realisation that nobody listens, so you might as well just say what they expect or want you to say.

The need to get by rather than to demand or expect better. None of these are things we can say we didn’t know about – we know, intellectually. But once you read this book your theoretical, extrapolated knowledge will come off the page, and you will begin to understand what a childhood in care really means. Now the trick is to hold on to that thought when I’m back in front of my desk, but to do so without crying all over the next social work chronology you read.

Great book, Ashley. Recommended.

The other day I was trawling back through very old Pink Tape posts looking for something I thought I’d written back in 2009. I was struck by how often I was writing on this blog, at at time when I was between babies and back at work. In one month there were about 20 posts. They were mostly short and sarcastic single issue observations on some piece of news, and many of them are difficult to understand as the linked material is no longer available, but it’s a reminder of how the rhythm of life changes over time.

Now, as I am on the last straights of my unhappy approach to my half centenial, and freshly back from yet another doctor’s appointment where I am poked and prodded and generally made to feel as if every ailment or ache is just an inevitable consequence of my near geriatric status, I write less often but (I hope) in a more considered way. At any rate my posts tend these days to be longer and more in depth. My lifelong struggle to live ‘less is more’ continues. I aspire to the discipline of concise prose and rarely achieve it. I dare say that today, I will fail in my aspirations yet again.

Today though, I thought I’d release into the wild a few unformed thoughts which are taking up vital space in my brain, rather than leaving them unthunk, unspoken and ultimately forgotten. Travel with me into the unstructured chaos of my brain.

Firstly, the contradictions in our approach to ‘public law’ children as compared to ‘private law’ children…this is a topic that has bothered me a lot of late.

On public law planet the statutory timescale is 26 weeks for the entire case. Of course, it isn’t actually achieved that often, but it is what we aspire to and reference continually, even as we pass the exit 26 and speed on down the litigation highway.

Meanwhile on the neighbouring private law planet, in some courts Cafcass are apparently taking 28 weeks just to write a s7 report. How is that so? Neither parenting assessments, nor even expert psychological or medical reports take such a length of time in care proceedings. Typically a report in care proceedings will take 12 weeks, at a push 16.

As noted by a family lawyer commenting on the 28 week timescales, it used to be said that Cafcass were the ‘eyes and ears of the court’. Extending the metaphor, this delay means that judges on private law planet are working blind for six whole months (bar a short safeguarding letter). In those cases where a s7 report has been directed post-findings, the court won’t exactly be working blind, but the family will have been in proceedings for probably 6 months already before the report is even directed. The pressure on families, and the impact of delay is huge.

Relatedly, I tweeted something the other day which didn’t go down well with those who subscribe to the view that domestic abuse should always mean the end of a relationship between child and perpetrating parent. My error was to use the word ‘flaw’ to encompass parents who perpetrate domestic abuse under that umbrella, which some thought was proof positive that I – and all lawyers – minimising abuse. Whilst people are entitled to their opinions, I think those conclusions were a product of the polarising, flattening medium of twitter, which doesn’t do nuance and constructive dialogue very well. There are plenty of examples out there (if anyone cares to look) of me banging on about how important it is NOT to minimise abuse, and raising concern that it is still happening. But it is also true that I don’t accept that any finding of domestic abuse should automatically result in the end of a relationship between child and parent without individualised consideration of the risks and benefits of it.

Anyway, more important than that explanation, is to try and articulate the unformed thought that was underlying what I was imperfectly expressing on X. When I used the term ‘flaws’ I was trying to find a phrase which captured all the various types of harm (intentional and unintentional, culpable and non-culpable, abusive and non-abusive) that we often see causing significant harm to children who are the subject of care proceedings. What I had in mind (and failed to articulate in a short tweet or three) was that on planet public law a local authority has a statutory duty to promote reasonable contact even where a parent (mother or father) is the perpetrator of abuse or has caused heinous harm in some other way. Even in cases where it is said a child has been the direct victim of physical or sexual abuse contact is often ongoing, albeit under supervision. If it is said that contact should not be promoted the local authority must seek the approval of the court under s34(4) Children Act. If a local authority wants to be authorised to permanently remove a child from the care of both parents, or to place a child for adoption they have to pass a very stringent legal test. It’s very much not a case of ‘domestic abuse = no contact’. Further, children are often rehabilitated to the care of fathers with a history of domestic abuse (often against the mother), sometimes where the parents are still in a relationship but the risk is thought to have reduced, and sometimes as an alternative to the mother caring (for example where a mother has an uncontrolled drug habit the children may be placed with a father notwithstanding strong evidence of a history of domestic abuse). Sometimes a mother, recognising she is unable to realistically persuade the court she can care safely, will accede to this plan because it’s better than foster care or adoption.

In public law proceedings one of the questions is often – ‘Can we keep these children safely in their family some how?’, whereas in private law proceedings, the context is always parental separation and dispute, and allegations of domestic abuse often result in a prolonged suspension of contact at least whilst allegations are investigated, and increasingly often no contact (or no direct contact) at the end of the case. However, in these cases, even where really serious domestic abuse is proved, a parent will more often be expected to manage contact after proceedings conclude entirely on their own, and without (in my view) proper regard to the ongoing impact and risks for both child and adult victims. Indeed, on planet private law a mother is often compelled to promote contact with a father that would lead to criticism for a failure to protect if she were to move to planet public law. On planet private law there is often a beauty contest between parents, where one parent complains of domestic abuse and the other counters with alienation – and bafflingly given their approach in care proceedings, local authority social workers drafted in to write s7 reports seem often ready and willing to reach conclusions that the problem is ‘alienation’. In public law the focus of the contest is between permanent removal (including adoption) by the big bad state – and keeping the kids with someone – anyone  – in the family network. The villain of the piece is the state not the other party. Courts are often reluctant to allow factual disputes about domestic abuse between parents to be fully litigated on planet public law (if its not the precipitating reason for issue) and the court may go no further than some bland finding of ‘abuse’ which does not clearly identify a single perpetrator, or than making findings against a mother that she has exposed the children to a risk of significant harm as a result of a pattern of entering relationships with abusive men (and failing to leave).

I’m talking generally, and anecdotally, of course. Each case is different and not all fit the above pattern. But those are the confusing patterns I see looking back over the last 20 odd years I have to draw on from experience.

How do we reconcile these differences in approach? I think they are irreconcilable. When I zoom out the common thread from my perspective is that the mechanisms and enduring impact of domestic abuse are better understood more often, but that the family court continues to act in contradictory ways, depending on the context.

However, that is merely an observation. What we do about it I don’t know. Discuss.

*goes off to do some work…wanders back*

What else is on my mind. Let’s see… *rummages*

This was a lovely, if depressing article in the Guardian: Chortle chortle, scribble scribble: inside the Old Bailey with Britain’s last court reporters 

There’s plenty more in there, but since embarking on this post I’ve developed a head full of cold and a scratchy throat, so I’m off for a lemsip before getting back to some proper work.