Progress against targets

On this page:

Improving efficiency and relationships
Managing care cases
Pre-proceedings advice
Domestic Abuse
Mediation
Community Legal Advice Services
Inter-agency steering group
Jointly commissioning health expert witnesses

Improving efficiency and relationships

Since we introduced our first whole system initiatives targets in 2007 we have made good progress:

established good working relationships between Her Majesty's Courts Service area directors and LSC family leads
improved local liaison with designated family judges, local authorities, CAFCASS/CAFCASS Wales and Tribunal Service Mental Health
gained membership of all Local Family Justice Councils (LFJC).

Our family leads have also been invited to become members of a variety of LFJC subcommittees including:

performance
domestic violence
Specialist Domestic Violence Courts
Alternative Dispute Resolution
Welsh Assembly Government

Key justice system partners now have a set contact person with whom they can exchange information, meaning that we are in a position to respond to queries quickly and consistently. This has resulted in judicial mediation training and the promotion of eligibility of legal aid in domestic abuse cases.

Managing care cases

The Public Law Outline (PLO) replaced the protocol for managing care cases from April 2008.

We introduced accompanying statutory guidance to assist local authorities in preparing care applications.

This will reduce unnecessary delay and put the child at the heart of proceedings by promoting better cooperation between all the parties involved. They seek to:

clarify minimum standards that the court will expect in care applications
simplify processes
improve case management.

Pre-proceedings advice

We have made provision for pre-proceedings advice (Level 2) to:

support the Public Law Outline
ensure that parents and those with parental responsibility have access to legal advice before care/supervision proceedings begin.

We hope:

they will engage or re-engage with the local authority
the local authority will work with them to avoid proceedings
where this is not possible to narrow the issues in proceedings so that they can be dealt with more quickly.

Domestic Abuse

We are working towards expanding access to family and social welfare law advice to survivors of domestic abuse living in refuge accommodation or accessing outreach services.

Approximately 40 refuge accommodation sites (Refuge and Women’s Aid/Welsh Women’s Aid) have expressed an interest in outreach services.

They will work with our family leads to establish new working arrangements with local providers, ensuring suitable coverage and availability of legal advice.

We are supporting the implementation of increasing the number of Specialist Domestic Violence Courts.

See the examples of regional work page for more details of work we are doing at a local level to improve the experience of domestic abuse survivors.

Mediation

Our main activity has been to promote the use of mediation where appropriate. This has included sending up-to-date lists of family mediators to CAFCASS/CAFCSS Cymru, HMCS and legal aid providers to facilitate the referral process.

Family leads have led training for the judiciary, LFJCs and practitioners, which, together with letters sent to legal aid practitioners, has helped develop a greater understanding of the benefits to all concerned of referring to mediation at the appropriate time.

Workshops with mediation providers and meeting with relevant agencies have led to discussions about the barriers to mediation and ideas on how to improve promotion.

We are also working with the MoJ to determine how we can promote mediation more effectively at court. This includes developing potential new initiatives.

Community Legal Advice Services

We have been promoting CLA services, such as the website and leaflets. Where family leads have noticed that understanding is lacking, such as in the courts, with the police, local authorities and CAFCASS, they have provided leaflets and information packs.

Some training has been given to courts to ensure understanding of the services available. Where LFJCs have developed websites, we have ensured that there are links between those and the CLA website.

Inter-agency steering group

We are participating in an English and Welsh inter-agency steering group to make sure:

implementation of the Public Law Outline is effective
all family justice system participants embed the new practices in their systems

Further work is underway at a local level to:

evaluate the effectiveness of the Public Law Outline
make sure our reform programme is understood.

Jointly commissioning health expert witnesses

Regional family leads have played a key role in building relationships necessary for our Alternative Commissioning of Experts pilot, which is investigating the direct commissioning of multi-disciplinary teams of health expert witnesses from NHS and private organisations to provide health expert witness services to the family court in public law childcare proceedings.

Further information on the pilot is available from the using experts in legally aided cases section of our website.

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Last updated: 30 April 2009