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

Lol! Good luck getting 50/50 when the other parent wants nothing to do with their child! What are you going to do then? Threaten them with a fine? Prison? Force them? Let's face it. Dead beat parents who don't want any part in their Childs life will always get their way.

struwelpeter - I agree back at you.

Probably for at least two years after my relationship ended I was an absolute mess. I was grieving and incredibly hurt - he wasn't. People told me I had to 'move on'. Its not that easy. I didn't want my daughter hurt anymore than she had been so I gritted my teeth, always spoke about him positively, had his photo up in her room etc, etc. But now I am over the absolute rage and misery over the way he treated me, I have to deal with my anger and contempt over the way he treats her - as a toy he can pick up and drop as it suits him with apparently little or no concern for her emotional well being.

I would LOVE to read the statute that is going to help me process all this.

Indeed hindsight is a wonderful, wonderfult thing. I too saw the warning signs at the outset that this was not a man with whom I should have children - he wasn't kind to me, he wasn't interested in me. He was and is very selfish. These are not good qualities in a parent.

But I ignored the warning signs because I was desparate to have a family. I was desparate to 'have a man' because this is the message we seem to get as women. I want to bring my daughter up to have high self esteem, to only want a relationship with a man if he is good to her and respects her. And ONLY consider having children together if they have talked honestly and openly about how they feel about all the big issues in life.

I completely agree that expecting the legal system to help people navigate these kind of issues is bonkers. the legal system is a very poor and crude tool for influencing people's behaviour. It can provide impetus for societal change which is already bubbling under - I am thinking particularly of race discrimination legislation and the legalisation of homosexuality etc. But it cannot ever be expected to have much influence on people's behaviour in such emotionally fraught times. I bet a lot of those who 'block' contact quite genuinely believe they are doing it for the right reasons, that their ex has been such a shit the children really are better off not knowing them. How can the law change such a mindset?

Nodding along with every word, Spero.

Nodding here as well. You've said everything I think Spero.

Financing counselling or intervention into messy divorcing parents in order to benefit the children will be a bottomless pit. I really wish you could take all men and women contemplating pregnancy and insist they took a short course (like a driver awareness course) but showing them how it really can happen to anyone.

I know, I know. Ridiculous idea :)

a bottomless pit which for some people could go on for years- just like litigation can .

pre- parenting course is all well in theory but you can't make people do it- otherwise what happens if they don't? do they get their baby taken away? Mandatory lessons at school could help.

Currently courts can order parents who need it to attend a PIPS course and for abusers to attend Perp programmes- not sure if any such perp course run for the far smaller numbers of women who abuse their partners, they seem to be aimed at men, with an acknowledgment that courses are also needed for women but funding etc etc. But what provision is there to deal with the contact blockers? what courses for them? and yes i'm only looking at a certain section of those who go to court. I take on board what people have said about fathers who abuse their court orders by not turning up or walking away completely from their child, how you deal with the latter is beyond me, i don't see how you can. Its estimated- there are no official national stats that i'm aware of, that 75-86% of contact applicants are fathers, 9-16% mothers. Some of those applicants are being denied contact for sound reasons, they are unsafe to be around their child, many more are not. Without me looking it up to see what the outcomes are I can't give figures as to how many get more contact than they were previously getting or how many actually succeeded totally in their application.

Changing the culture and running separating classes for parents a bit along the same lines as antenatal classes might work though. Most parents attend antenatal classes because they want to be prepared. Separating classes and emotional support would encourage parents to put the needs of their children first and give them strategies to deal with conflict so they avoid going to court in the first place. There's nothing new about the idea of early intervention, some years ago it seems plans to introduce an Early Intervention Programme for courts were foiled.

www.cyriax.co.uk/early-interventions.htm

Despite the consultation on shared care ending today the Government released draft legislation on Family Justice on Monday. The requirement for the applicant to arrange a Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting and Child Arrangement orders replacing contact and residence orders are to be introduced into legislation.

www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm84/8437/8437.pdf

There is no mention of introducing a proposed legislative statement about shared care or extra enforcement measures. They may come later, I suppose, but I wonder if there is any significance in three main players in the shared care consultation (Ken Clark, Tim Loughton and Sarah Teather) being casualties of the Government's reshuffle??

a pre assessment meeting is good - still has to be funded tho .

changing it to child arrangement order is a subtle but reasonable amendment.

however, the media (espec DM et al!) still talk about people "getting custody" so they havent come to grips with residence and contact yet!

separation courses - yes - some places offer these - I paid to attend group sessions and found it really useful. but attending such with exp would have been a nitemare (i did attend some joint family therapy and there was no progress at all eg in him accepting separation at the time etc) . i still not sure nif he has had appropriate counselling...(he attended some church based sessions but the website has stories of how it helped people get back together again! was not child-focused)

I think we are all agreeing that this is fundamentally NOT a legal problem and the real issue with which we must grapple is how to help people have better relationships. The problems start well before the children are born, a relationship dynamic solidifies, patterns of communication or failure to communicate are set.

Happily the majority of sepaarating parents do sort it out without going to court. So the court ends up with a self selecting group who have already shown that it is going to be difficult to resolve the issues between them. It is far too late then to expect a happy outcome.

I have been pondering this for many years now. I agree with franceforless that maybe intervention at school could help. It has always struck me as odd that as a society we agree that certain things are hard and we need many years of teaching to master them, but when it comes to relationships we are just told to jump in and love will conquer all.

It's so difficult as I appreciate that sexual/romantic relationships are for many a very important need but I think it is so sad that so many of us seem to start and stay in relationships which don't work, and have children within those relationships.

The Putting Children First course runs sessions in parallel so ex-partners in conflict both attend the same course, in the same timeframe, but never face to face.

In a way most private children cases are settled by a judge mediating ie intervening in a dispute to bring about agreement, but to be clear the requirement in England & Wales is for parents to attend a Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting to see if mediation is appropriate before any mediation can go ahead. Parents don't/wouldn't have to attend PIPs or separating classes together.