Although the family courts are taking steps to improve
their awareness of domestic abuse, the killing of children on
contact visits has shown that risk assessment is not always
perfect. Gordon Carson reports
The family courts should abandon any thought that men who are
violent to their partners can still be good fathers, one of
Britain's most senior judges said last month
(
Judge urges safety first on violent fathers, 30 March).
But Lord Justice Wall's recommendation in a report came too late
for at least three children murdered in the past 10 years, for whom
the courts granted unsupervised contact to violent fathers against
professional advice.
These cases were first highlighted in a report last year from
Women's Aid that identified 29 children killed by their fathers
from 1994 to 2004 after a relationship breakdown.
Lord Justice Wall said eight of the deaths "could not have been
reasonably foreseen or prevented by the courts", while 18 were
subject to no court proceedings. However, he found problems in
three cases that involved consent orders for contact, where
separating parents come to court with an agreement to be ratified
by the judge.
He also referred to "frequent complaints" from mothers that,
because of the courts' "perceived" bias towards contact, lawyers
pressurise them into consent orders they do not believe are safe
for their children.
Lord Justice Wall recommended that no judge should sit for the
first time in private law proceedings without multi-disciplinary
instruction on domestic violence.
Malcolm Richardson, a magistrate member of government advisory body
the Family Justice Council, says magistrates have had training on
the issue available for two years.
"To the best of my knowledge it has not been specified as an
essential prerequisite [of sitting as a magistrate] but it is
available and I would expect most will have taken it up," he
says.
"In the judiciary, as in the community, there is more awareness of
and sensitivity towards domestic violence. Like you would see in
the community as a whole, there will be a range of opinions [in the
judiciary] as to the seriousness of it at first
representation."
Richardson says all magistrates sitting in family proceedings will
be aware of the widening of the definition of harm, through the
Adoption and Children Act 2002, to include cases where children
have seen others being harmed as well as those where they have been
harmed themselves.
A spokesperson for the Judicial Studies Board, which trains judges
in England and Wales and oversees the training of magistrates, says
training on domestic abuse is a key component of its induction and
continuation courses for private family law.
Judges can only do so much, though. They also rely on information
gathered by other professionals. But this was found to be lacking
in a report last October from HM Inspectorate of Court
Administration. It said most Children and Family Court Advisory and
Support Service practitioners did not "sufficiently understand" the
nature of domestic abuse and that routine ways of working "do not
assess risk".
In response, Cafcass said its domestic violence policy launched
last October including standards on risk assessments and training
requirements would help tackle the problems.
Richardson says this situation could improve through "gateway"
forms introduced in January 2005. These are used in private law
applications and ask whether domestic abuse is a factor at the
start of the case.
An amendment to the Children and Adoption Bill now going through
parliament could also improve child safety by introducing a
mandatory risk assessment checklist for all cases involving abuse
allegations.
Women's Aid policy officer Deborah McIlveen says this might be too
little. The charity, and others, including Barnardo's and Refuge,
backed an amendment that would have re- quired judges to have due
regard to risk assessments when making contact decisions, but the
standing committee on the bill rejected it.
She also says the courts and Cafcass practitioners must listen more
to children's voices, but the drive for early resolution makes this
harder to achieve. "Children don't talk about it immediately," she
says. "They might not say anything to a Cafcass officer for
ages."
Richardson has similar concerns. "There's a conflict between the
idea of early resolution by agreement versus safety," he says.
