Shared care proposals covering England and Wales - your views needed

[flippinada]

I thought this would be a good place to share this as it's an issue which affects a lot of lone parents.

Anyway, the government has issued a consultation paper on changing the law to introduce a legal presumption of shared parenting (ie 50/50 care) on separation as a result of the demands made by fathers? rights groups.

This will have profound safety and welfare impacts for children and their mothers who have experienced domestic violence from fathers/partners and your views need to be heard.

The details can be accessed here: cooperative parenting following family separation

spero that won't change- from my understanding of this consultation's suggestions it won't anyway. Whoever the primary carer is pre-split will still be primary carer after, unless they are not the person most suitable i.e there are serious issues about their parenting ability.

The problem is that maintaining the role of the primary carer after the split doesn't always happen at the moment.

Anecdotal evidence (due to lack records) suggests that it is more often applied when the mother was the primary carer prior to the split - in situations where the father was, and there is post-separation disagreement, the mother is often awarded residency despite being unable to fulfil the role without extensive support from family and/or professional childcare.

It is probably a consequence of social norms - some magistrates tend to consider a young child's place is with their mother. I've even heard of advice given by a Mag that mum should give up her profession to look after the baby for a few years and Dad, who was the primary carer, should work more and pay maintenance!

Hopefully, this new legislation will change the underlying principles under which decisions are being made.

completely agree with what NADM has said.

I don't think you can legislate human behaviour. I'm with Blackberryice in despising contact blocking parents and likening them to feckless absent parents. (I have deliberately been gender neutral)

Yesterday I read a thread from a woman shocked that her ex might get alternate weekends and alternate birthdays etc.. She 'is the mum' and therefore the child is only hers... She could not possibly contemplate two days apart from her children (but their dad should??) That attitude needs changing.

I would love to change people's attitudes. I'd love parents to enter pregnancy and marriage with a 'how would we manage a spilt' plan. It's so so naive in this day and age to not do so. It wouldn't be romantic but wouldn't threaten a strong relationship either.

The fall out is so damaging for everyone involved. Could law ever manage this... probably not. It would have to balance parents using access and finance as a way to attack the ex with parents wanting to have a part in their children's lives.

From what STIDW says then it would appear the legislation leaves more room for more litigation, which has to be a bad thing.
I'm in the middle of the court process - ex was abusive and in on a perp programme, which is what my sol said was necessary. Sadly, the magistrates when we appear spend a considerable amount of time trying to get ex to be "reasonable" about some very simple things.
Ex is very unlikely to be reasonable because of the issues that led to the abuse. I don't expect the court to be able to sort that out - it goes back to his childhood and how he choses to live his adult life.
To come up with a solution that works in some way, there would have to be a mechanism to get him to man up, but I don't expect that. All I wish is that I never had to spend another half hour in the court as it has a knock on effect on the DCs and my parenting. I don't think he is able to negotiate and that puts me in a position where I'm having to accommodate difficult things. He is very much stuck on the "access" notion.
As I said before and I think Norris? said in his report that was rejected by the government - a breakup is a failure of parenting, to try and pretend once the breakup has happened that the parenting bit can be magically fixed plays into the hands of those who don't take responsibility for the break in the first place.
Phew, rant over

"If the government expects better parenting after a breakup then perhaps more emphasis should be put on understanding parenting before it happens.
We have sex education, we have courses on giving birth but very little on bringing up children, dealing with the stresses of early parenthood and thinking about how to cope with a broken family before it happens.
It's still about an "I want" mentality from parents rather than working out in each individual case what is best for the DCs based on what went on before and what can be put in place in the future as needs change and parents situations change."

This is such a good point.

I really don't understand why people think the residency/contact model is about children being the "possession" of the parent with majority care - 50/50 puts me very much in mind of couple splitting CD collections when they breakup. I don't dispute that 50/50 can work in some situations, and if that is the best arrangement for that family then that is great. I just don't think it's a cure-all that can be applied across the board - in many cases, particularly high conflict ones, I think it would actually make things worse. I am pleased to see that the proposals are to continue assessing each case individually. I agree with STIDW that tbh, the proposals aren't really changing very much, although I too would have liked to see a mention of the damage done by the parent with minority care not sticking to their part of a contact order, and the ability of the other parent to have the order changed as a result of that behaviour. It seemed very one-sided in that respect.

Its a difficult one,I am divorced 8 years since my 2 were under 2.My children see their father every other weekend due to distance,We have a very open easy relationship (taken many years).He would acknowledge that the huge majority of parenting falls on my shoulder and he pays very reasonable maintainence.
However for the first couple of years my xh was awful truly awful he would ackowledge this,he was in so much pain from the divorce(no excuse) that he wasn't logical and you could not communicate with him.

This is where it fall apart,people who are often splitting because of their differences are in essence generally not on great terms.Its a hard realistaion that after divorce you still have to work on your bloody relationship!!!which can take a long time to come to terms with.

Spero - the reference in the Family Justince review to the 'Australian Experience' has largely been countered by Professor Parkinson

www.separatedfamilies.info/policy-makers/family-justice-review/australian-experience/

This too makes interesting reading. Norgrove seems to have been one eyed as he chose to ignore the experiences of the Scandinavian countries such as Denmark and Norway.

It is also starting to be recognised that the EOW norm is not really suitable for the interests of the children either - 2 weeks is too long between seeing the 'other parent'

Sharing care has got to be a good thing for most families - whether intact or separated. But it shouldn't mean that each parent has to 50% of everything. One parent may be better at organising the children's day to day lives, and always have taken on that role. One may be better at earning money to support them, or at getting involved in their education and teaching them new skills. Ony may have a job that makes school pick ups and day to day weekday care impossible. Once separated, one may be unable to provide them with much space, or live far from school or friends.

We need to get away from thinking that a good relationship with both parents requires 50-50 split - it requires sufficient contact for a meaningful relationship but this can be done in many different ways. Me and my ex split it so he has 2/7 of the nights. This works well for us and the kids have a good relationship with their dad - much closer than I did with my own dad who lived with us but was almost never left in sole charge of the kids. I don't think my children would have a better relationship if their dad did more of the weekday care - I think their lives would just be messier and more complicated. More homework would be forgotten and playdates failed to be arranged.

The issue of what is best when there's a lot of conflict is a very difficult one - but some of that conflict could be caused by making the parent who has previously not been the main carer think that they need to fight for 50% of their children's time in order not to "lose" them. Respecting your child's relationship with their other parent (including in many cases repecting that your children may be better off living mainly with the other parent) is a crucial part of separated parenting.

The courts aren't just for parents in conflict though - sometimes courts are involved as part of a divorce agreement, or just because the parents want to have things formalised not because there's a major conflict.

Child care was an option at the all girls school i attended many years ago. It was only available for those less academic, so anyone doing O Levels was not allowed to do it (same with typing lessons!). The rationale was i think that less academic girls would probably only end up working in child care or as a typist or in retail (but no training at school for that), rather than any thinking that both were bloody useful skills for everyone to learn. Even if pupils have no desire to become a parent learning how to communicate, compromise, learn some first aid etc cannot be a bad thing. I still shudder at the old exam system.
In some countries they have intervention schemes to help teenagers who have expressed an interest in becoming a young parent see what the reality of it is.

I don't think it changes much.

What I think is needed in cases of residence/contact disputes is a much bigger investment in CAFCASS so that there is a qualified social worker with enough time available to really understand the dynamics of a particular family and come up with a personalized plan for the children concerned. There can never be any one-size-fits-all solution.

As I understood the clear message from Australia was that for the families in conflict, a presumption of shared parenting simply e

ooops don't know how that happened.

What I wanted to say was I understood the Australian experience very clearly to have shown that for children whose parents were in bitter conflict, the presumption of shared parenting simply exposed those children to more conflict for longer. When asked the children were clear that it wasn't working and they didn't like it. Australian parents often had much greater geographical distances to deal with, which also didn't help.

Of course shared parenting is the gold standard for all sorts of obvious reasons. But when parents don't have the emotional intelligence to communicate or where one parent is abusive, its not a solution for the children.

I wasn't aware this rather obvious conclusion had been debunked by anyone but I will check out your link.

As I understand from my (admittedly very brief flick through Prof Parkinson's seminar) he is saying that criticisms of the Australian system are not warranted because few orders result in shared care!

Even looking only at new shared care arrangements in the population that separated since 2006, 93% did not adopt an equal time arrangement and 84% did not adopt an arrangement within the wider Australian definition of 'shared care'. Other research indicates that shared care arrangements are the least likely parenting arrangement to have resulted from litigation, according to mothers' reports. 77 There is simply not either an abundance or an epidemic of shared care in Australia (depending on one's point of view). Where shared care arrangements are made, mostly the parents have not been involved in litigation.

Not sure Prof Parkinson can therefore be cited in favour of a presumption to shared care. He seems to be saying that the statistics show that even when there is such a presumption, shared cared orders are not made. I find this completely unsurprising. What I had understood to be the unpleasant 'unintended consequence' of the reform was that it encouraged litigation and hence exposing children to further unpleasantness.

Shared care is only likely to work if parents can communicate and they live close by each other. Most of those cases that end up in court will not have parents who can communicate.

In our case, this would not be in my DS's best interests. My STBXH started working away in London just over a year before he left for an O.W., in June this year. We are in the North East. We agreed to him having contact with DS every other weekend, but in practice, it has been more like every three weekends and last week, he texted to say he can't come up the next weekend we'd agreed, so when he does come up, it will have been five weeks for DS to go without seeing him.

I think shared care can and does work in some situations, but in ours, there's no way it could.

There are cases of court ordered shared residency where the parents live in different countries

It's not about the amount of time the DCs spend with each parent but the level of involvement they have in day to day decisions.

A split couple with shared residency would (ideally) discuss issues like whether a DC can have their ears pierced, whether they can have riding lessons, which swimming club to join. it requires a great deal of co-operation on the part of the parents - something that can't be Court Ordered IMO.

In my experience 'shared residence' has become a somewhat meaningless sop. If parents live in different countries, or even more than an hours drive away, it is difficult to see how in any real sense 'parenting' is 'shared'. One parent by default will be the primary carer, provided the home, doing the washing, cooking the tea, ferrying around to activities etc, etc. All the drudgery of parenting in fact, but what makes up about 90% of what is valuable to a child - that a parent is there, doing stuff, looking after the child, making him/her feel loved and wanted.

It is much more difficult to do that when living far away.

I am afraid the real problem will always be that when some parents separate, they can't do it well. They let their hatred, resentment and/or fear of the other leak out all over the place. Sometimes these strong feelings have an objective basis, when a parent has been abusive. But more often (in my experience anyway) neither parent has been any worse than the other. They just hate each other and are either unable or unwilling to understand the damage this does to their children.

The law never has and never will be the arena to sort this out. I don't know what the answer is. Licencing parents is the only thing that springs to mind but that cure would be worse than the disease.

But thinking that if we only just had a different wording of the legal test that would be the magic wand that sorted everything out, is delusional and wishful thinking of the most unhelpful kind.

It's not about the amount of time the DCs spend with each parent but the level of involvement they have in day to day decisions.

I really can't see how having two people making decisions arguing over ear piercing/riding lessons etc is a positive IF one of those people is not spending time with the person they are making decisions about. Open to abuse/misunderstanding etc.

Spero - one of the points PP was making that court cases went down in contradiction to Nor groves claim...

SROs are a tool to send a message that two parents are equal. It is not necessary for cooperation for an sro to be ordered otherwise Mothers(mainly) would perpetuate conflict in order to prevent.

Unless you have been up against a parent who is hostile to co-parenting or more time and therefore been sidelined and excluded from your childs iife then its not possible to comment on the merits or otherwise of SROs and shared parenting.

If you like further reading try A v A....a case where an SRO was a necessity, for the sake of the children

Norgrove recommended and the Government have accepted doing away with the terms "residence" and "contact" in private cases because they give parents a sense of loosing and winning. So that means in future there will be no such thing as a Shared Residence Order, just a Child Arrangement Order. Seems daft then introducing a legislative statement that will give parents something else to argue about instead.

According to Prof Parkinson the the systematic changes (more parental education etc) in Australia "went down quite well" but the impression created by the 2006 legislation "led to some shared care arrangements that were less than satisfactory for children." Perhaps the number of case went down because of better education rather than changes in the law. He goes on to say the Norgrove Committee were right to avoid either a presumption of equal time or giving parents the impression that this is the law.

BTW let's not forget the basics. Parental Responsibility gives parents equal responsibility and rights to carry out those responsibilities. Residence or shared residence just determines where a child lives.

Court Ordered Residency does change the distribution of those responsibilities and remove the equality of parents, though.

A residency order bestows responsibility for day to day care on the resident parent (as per the wording of the order) and the resident parent holds the authority relating to the DCs overseas travel.

IMO a residency order is far more than just where the child lives.

Toothbrush There are plenty of parents who are still together but who are living apart through circumstance for weeks or months at a time, with the DCs not seeing one parent in that time.
Are you suggesting that those DCs don't benefit from the co-operation & agreement between their parents on everyday matters?

NotaDisneyMum, you're absolutely right. I think in the case of a sole residency order, the PWC also holds all responsibility for deciding schooling, healthcare etc as well. Shared res orders make the point that such things should have the involvement of both parents.

snorbs That's not my understanding - education and medical decisions remain the responsibility of both parents as far as I am aware, although the reality is that few NRP do get involved.

Even a NRP who has minimal contact should still be kept informed directly by the school, and can, even when a RO is in place, state that the school require their own parental permission in addition to the RP.