8 May 2020 You can listen to the Voice of the Child here. 

A mum fighting for post adoption contact, and Anne Neale from LAW/SNS interviewed by Natasha about remote hearings and the Nuffield report of its rapid consultation. Nuffield’s findings are very biased towards professionals. Only 3% of their respondents were parents and only 6% were organisations, like ours. The rest were judges, barristers, solicitors, social workers and CAFCASS. So not surprising that they conclude that responses were “evenly balanced in terms of their overall positive and negative reactions to remote hearings”. This is NOT our experience! Interestingly, some of the most critical comments are from judges . . . we will be responding further, watch this space. Our evidence to the Nuffield consultation here.

Posted by Natasha in Researching Reform, Voice of the Child Podcast

For our thirteenth Voice of the Child podcast, we talk with a mother who has experienced three remote hearings during the Coronavirus lockdown, and her McKenzie Friend Anne Neale, who is also the spokesperson for Legal Action for Women.

In this episode, we look at how these hearings are conducted, the ethical and human rights concerns they raise, and we discuss the Nuffield Foundation’s newly published review on remote family court hearings.

Many thanks to the mother (who uses a pseudonym during the interview), and to Anne for taking part in this podcast.

You can listen to the Voice of the Child here.