Family Reporting Pilot Extended To Private Law Hearings & Children Cases

Court cases that involve family law matters have traditionally taken place behind closed doors and without access to the media. However, there is an ongoing project in a limited number of courts where legal bloggers and accredited media are permitted (subject to safeguards) to report on what they see and hear in the family court.

The reporting pilot was first launched on 31 January 2023 and was initially launched for public law cases only. However, from 15 May 2023, the pilot has extended to private law and children’s cases. By the autumn of 2023, it is expected that the pilot will extend to cover hearings before magistrates.

The progress has been reviewed by the Transparency Implementation Group (TIG) combining working with designated family judges, local pilot liaisons, and transparency liaison judges.

From the review, it has highlighted that further issues require guidance. These issues refer to:

The Family Drug and Alcohol Courts (FDAC)

The FDAC works with parents who have issues with drug and alcohol misuse. The bulletin published noted that in Leeds and Cardiff, care proceedings that involve these issues are in some instances routed through the FDAC.

There are two types of court appointments in FDAC:

Normal hearings fall within the scope of the pilot scheme and within The Family Procedure Rules 2010. As such, reporters can attend these hearings and may report if a transparency order is made.

NLRs do not fall under the scope of the pilot. These are often semi-therapeutic conversations between parents, the Judge, and the FDAC support. However, should a pilot reporter wish to attend an NLR in an FDAC case, they can but must first attend a normal court hearing and raise the issue with the Judge.

Independent Social Workers (ISW)

The ISWs are known for either working on the instruction of the local authority or as an expert on the joint instruction of the parties.

Under the pilot, social workers, children’s guardians, or reporting officers, generally are to be not named. Therefore, questions have risen as to where ISWs fall, this issue has been given large consideration.

When an ISW is involved on the instruction of local authority only and works in preparation of assessments or works with the child, then under no circumstances should they be named.

However, if the ISW is decided by the Court as an expert at the joint expense of the parties, then they should along with other experts be named.

‘Making Lists Better’

The TIG has come up with a project called ‘Making Lists Better.’ This includes coming up with a solution that would enable the Court lists to include the necessary information to grant pilot reporters the opportunity to choose which cases to observe and report on as currently there is a poverty of information in the published Court lists.

The pilot risks failure if there is no improvement in the flow of information between the Court and the press and also means the hearings will carry on taking longer with reporters attending with no information given.

The idea behind this is that the public Court list will have a series of codes for cases that fall within the pilot. These codes will link to a ‘code breaker’ which will provide information on the issues involved in the case. The issues will be decided by the legal adviser or gatekeeping judge, and they will ensure the case appears on the list in a specific way. The code breaker will be accessed through the TIG website and on Court Serve. HMCTS are currently assessing the proposal.

Further to this, the practice of not naming local authorities on Court lists will stop. For instance, most cases usually appear as ‘RE: A Child’; whereas now they will show as ‘Leeds City Council v A Child’, this is so the pilot reporter can identify which local authority is included and can ask any enquires as a result.

What is the purpose of the pilot scheme?

The purpose of the pilot scheme is to improve transparency in the Family Court justice system. This involves introducing legal bloggers and accredited media to report on what they hear and see in Family Court cases. They will be issued with a “transparency order” and provided with relevant Court papers.

The reasons it is being piloted is to ensure that it can be done safely and have little disruption to people who are involved in the cases and the Courts.

It was one of the main recommendations in the President of the Family Division’s Transparency Review, published October 2021.

As far as we are aware the scheme will continue to run for the year for both public law hearings, private law hearings, and children’s cases.

Comment

This latest extension of the pilot scheme is a welcome development. The family court has been known as the secret court for too long now. It is essential that the public have trust and confidence in the decisions made and allowing the media and bloggers to report is certainly a step in the right direction.