SCOTLAND: Love-Tug Parents Offered Mediation Scheme to Resolve Child Disputes
From http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2670588
Love-Tug Parents Offered Mediation Scheme to Resolve Child Disputes
By Jennifer Sym, PA News
Measures to encourage warring ???love-tug??? parents to attend mediation instead of sinking into lengthy and bitter courtroom battles over their children were announced by the Government today.
Three new Family Resolution Pilot schemes for families to agree practical solutions were unveiled for London, Brighton and Sunderland.
Minister for Children Margaret Hodge and Family Justice Minister Lord Filkin also announced an additional ??3.5million for child contact services, including funding of 14 new supervised contact centres and the introduction of new forms to ensure judges are aware of accusations or instances of domestic violence at the start of cases.
Mrs Hodge said: ???Battles in the courts about contact and residence following separation or divorce can be harmful to children. That???s why we want divorcing or separating parents to reach agreement between themselves about arrangements for the future of their children.???
The Family Resolution Pilots will run for a year and, if successful, could be rolled out nationally.
She added: ???By helping more parents agree practical solutions that will benefit their children, we believe that we can divert many families from lengthy, costly and damaging disputes that experience shows will leave many unhappy with the outcome.???
Fathers 4 Justice, the campaign group whose members dress as super-heroes to stage protests on gantries and cranes, said the pilot was ???cynical??? and an ???absolute sham???.
They said is was modelled on a scheme in Florida, but without the legal enforcement needed to make it work.
Matt O???Connor, founder of Fathers 4 Justice, said: ???From our point of view, there are no good points.
???It is an absolute sham of a proposal.
???In Florida it works because there is also enforcement of contact orders.
???This does nothing to address that. It does nothing to help people in the family court system and we regard it as a cynical attempt to stop parents going to court, particularly in London, because they are jammed to the gunwales.???
He said around 50% of contact orders were broken by parents, leaving many fathers ??? who are the ???vast majority??? of those who seek the order ??? without access to their children.
Among the administrators of the scheme will be charities and the Children And Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS), which was condemned by the Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee last year.
It found there were ???serious failings??? in the organisation which was unable to cope with the demand for its services.
Mr O???Connor, who says the group has 7,500 members, said: ???If they don???t have enforcement, what chance is there she (the mother) will listen to a mediator if she won???t listen to a judge, or follow a piece of paper if she won???t follow a court order?
He added that, ???to make matters worse???, the Children And Family Court Advisory and Support Service would administer it, ???so what we have today potentially is a Minister with a history of failing children when she was leader of Islington Council giving a project to an organisation with a history of failing children???.
He pledged an escalating, more serious campaign for equality for parents before the courts, and called for the creation of a Minister for Family Life.
A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills stressed the scheme was a pilot, which was the product of wide consultation within the UK and internationally.
It was designed to ensure parents saw a mediator within two weeks, rather than up to 16 weeks, as is the case currently.
He said the agreed contact plan could then be ratified by a judge.
The pilot is not compulsory, but judges may question why parents had not resorted to the scheme.
Official figures show the number of contact orders granted by the courts has increased by nearly 50% in five years, from 42,000 in 1997 to 61,000 in 2002.
Lord Filkin said: ???Fewer than one in 10 contact disputes go to court. We want to ensure even more parents splitting up are enabled to resolve parenting issues between themselves in ways that work.
???A mutually agreed plan for parenting is less painful for children and parents are more likely to stick to an agreement they???ve come to themselves, rather than an agreement imposed by a judge.
But he added: ???It is not acceptable for contact orders to be flouted. We will be looking at ways to give judges greater and more varied levers to enforce and facilitate compliance.
???This response is the first strand in our on-going work on parental relationship breakdown, but we intend to go further. We are currently looking more widely at these issues and will bring forward proposals for wider change in the summer.???
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