The Making Contact Work Consultation
20. In March 2001 a consultation paper was issued
entitled Making Contact Work: a consultation paper from the
Children Act Sub-Committee of the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Board
on Family Law (CASC) on the facilitation and enforcement of contact.
A report was subsequently made to the Lord Chancellor's Department
(as it then was) and a response was issued by the Department in
August 2002.[6]
21. Amongst the recommendations made by the CASC
were the following:
- The Lord Chancellor's Department
should fund additional facilities for resolving contact disputes
by negotiation, conciliation and mediation. Whilst there is plainly
a role for the court in resolving contact disputes, there is a
widespread perception that such disputes are better addressed
outside the court system. There is also a widespread feeling that
an application to the court should be the last resort;
- The judiciary and the court service need to promote
a culture of judicial continuity avoiding time-wasting and inconsistency,
by a more proactive management of judges' calendars and itineraries;
- Legislation must provide the powers the courts
need. These are, essentially, the following: the power to refer
a parent who disobeys an order for contact to a variety of resources
including information meetings or meetings with a counsellor;
parenting programmes; the power to refer to a psychiatrist or
psychologist (publicly funded in the first instance); the power
to refer a non-resident parent to an education or perpetrator
programme; the power to place on probation with a condition of
treatment or attendance at a given class; the power to award financial
compensation from one parent to the other; and the power to impose
a Community Service Order;
- A recommendation that judges and magistrates
should be given the power to refer parties to mediation.
Many of these recommendations were accepted in whole
or in part by the Department at the time. Lord Justice Wall has
observed that many of these themes have found their way into the
Government's Parental Separation Green Paper, although
a number of the more radical options appear to have been dropped.[7]
22. In evidence to us, Mr Justice Ryder also raised
the implementation of the CASC recommendations, noting that:
This has been a constant theme of the judiciary for
a number of years. The commitment is welcomed but concern remains
as to the timescale, the commitment of Parliamentary time (i.e.
the priority of that commitment, the lack of engagement of the
NHS… and the funding of the options which should be made
available).[8]
23. Given the limited nature of the current consultation,
many of these proposals could have been adopted much earlier.
We regret that there has been such delay on the part of the Department
in following up this previous initiative. One consequence of the
Government's delay is that the clamour for change and reform has
greatly increased in the intervening four years.
24. All of the Government's proposals now contained
in the Draft Children (Contact) and Adoption Bill must be considered
in the light of the five outcomes set out for children's services[9]
and the policies designed to achieve those aims.
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