Introduction

The overall direction of thinking in this book is to consider ways and means of embedding the crisis model of preventive intervention into policies and practices that support children and young people facing serious interparental conflict and separation. In Part II I examine the relevance of this approach in the context of primary prevention in schools and, by implication, other first responder support services. I now turn to what, in mental health terms might be called a secondary preventive backup service for children and families when parental disputes take the form of litigation in the family courts, that is to say, when the interests of the child become the primary concern of the judicial system governed under the constitutional principles of the rule of law and an independent judiciary. As we will see, this raises the important issue of where the boundary of the family court system should be drawn so as to distinguish it from the state's executive services. Perhaps controversially I argue that the family court's welfare arm in the form of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) should be viewed constitutionally as part of the judicial system, since ultimately its officers are accountable to the family court judge when carrying out the duties to children. By contrast, unless mediators are undertaking work within the court system, their services lie outside of the court. In terms of Cafcass practice, I wish to see its officers equipped to understand and apply the crisis intervention approach whenever appropriate. I develop this line of thinking later in Chapter Thirteen, but first I need to review the emerging family justice policy background.

In the next three chapters I turn to policy and family law reform, an area with which I have been most closely associated in my academic career. I review major policy changes, introduced by the previous Coalition government and the senior judiciary, in the way the family justice system seeks to meet children's needs. It is a story of initial government blunders followed by attempts at emergency repair once it became apparent that substantial and hastily introduced cuts in civil legal aid had produced a number of unintended consequences. Some of these I have already highlighted in the Preface and Chapter One.