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Children Act

Further to the statement of 11 January made by my right hon. Friend Baroness Ashton of Upholland, I am pleased to announce the publication of the Cardiff university research into the operation of rule 9.5 of the Family Proceedings Rules 1991 that was commissioned by my Department. Copies have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses and may be accessed via the DCA website www.dca.gov.uk/majrepfr.htm The Cardiff university researchers consulted with children and their families to obtain their views on being separately represented under rule 9.5 in Children Act 1989 court proceedings brought by their parents about future contact and/or residence. We wanted to understand the extent to which formal representation through a solicitor and guardian is meeting children's needs or whether there are other ways in which their needs can be met. The researchers focused on the features, both those which were beneficial and those which were adverse, of separate representation, alongside statistical evidence already in the public domain. The research indicates that provisions for meeting children's needs could be improved. There are a number of important recommendations made in this research report. They include the need for the potential advantages of rule 9.5 to be secured earlier in proceedings; a call for greater judicial continuity in the hearing of cases; the proposal that children should have clear, reliable and age-appropriate information about their parents' separation/divorce from the beginning of proceedings; that children should have a ““passage agent””—someone, apart from their parent(s), to support them through the court process; that there should be early identification of the features of the case which are likely to produce intractable behaviour on the part of parents; that the child should always be separately represented before making enforcement orders under the (eventual) Children and Adoption Act; and the need to implement changes to FamilyMan to record (i) if the tandem model was used (ii) who was appointed to represent the child and (iii) name of judge hearing the case. The research report, alongside consideration of other research focusing on children's welfare and other statistical evidence, will be used to inform the making of rules of court under subsections 122 (1)(b) and (2) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002. In the meantime, existing provisions for the representation of children remain in force, which continue to offer a range of ways in which the courts may ascertain children's wishes and feelings.