This issue, the second in our 40th Anniversary year, continues our approach of providing new research findings linking the fields of social welfare and family law, and offers perspectives from other jurisdictions on issues of current interest in this jurisdiction.
We begin with two approaches to children’s issues here and in Scandinavia. Kim Holt and Nancy Kelly offer a timely reminder of the need for social work education and practice to focus more closely on developing and sustaining relationship-based approaches to working with children and their families in the present context of political and legislative change, where organisational imperatives which are highly procedural and metric driven must be navigated. By contrast Solveig Sigurdottir and her social work colleagues in Iceland are able to report their own study of young people’s positive and negative views of equal time sharing arrangements between their parents after separation in Iceland, based on parental agreement, in which children’s voices are listened to.
Deirdre McGowan gives us an account of the mediation debate in Ireland following the Mediation Bill 2017, where, as in this jurisdiction, mediation still plays a minor role in the family justice system despite government encouragement. The author also examines the legal framework for all issues divorce and dissolution in Ireland, and concludes by arguing that policy focus must shift away from encouraging mediation as an alternative to litigation towards a more nuanced understanding of mediation as a support to court-based dispute resolution.
Turning to social welfare issues, Marie Burton investigates the impact on legal advice of the shift to telephone only services in social welfare legal aid which took place after the Legal Aid and Punishment and Sentencing of Offenders Act 2012 was implemented in 2013. The paper reports findings from an empirical study of telephone and face-to-face contact, showing that face-to-face contact has considerable advantages in the advice interview as both clients and lawyers find it easier to express themselves, there is a stronger emotional connection between them, and greater ability to consult and confer over documents. Telephone only advice may be suitable for less complicated matters and more capable clients, but clients with more complex needs and more serious or urgent matters are best served by face-to-face advice. It is to be hoped that this information will be of interest to the current LASPO post-legislative review.
Our last article from Canada Beth Archer Kuhn draws on a small qualitative study exploring parent perspectives of child custody decision-making and raises concerns about the need to focus on parental experience, including high conflict and domestic abuse, and to differentiate these concerns from examination of the issues around children’s adjustment and well-being.
The Ombudsman, Tribunals and Administrative Justice Section focuses on the development of a new approach to vulnerability by Ofgem and the Financial Conduct Authority to see whether it has been implemented at company level and had an impact on the ombudsman. The development has long been as argued for in the academic literature, but Cosmo Graham suggests that operationalising the concept will require further work in the context of systems dealing with large numbers of consumers.
This account of a specific change in the ways of approaching vulnerability is complemented by Roxana Delaghanis’ review of Jonathan Herring’s valuable recent comprehensive overview ‘Vulnerable adults and the Law’, focussing on capacity, inherent jurisdiction, the ECHR, care, criminal law and contract. Stephen Gilmore adds a full and enthusiastic review of the second edition of John Eekelaar’s ‘Family Law and Personal Life’ which sets out the hope that in an open society, people’s personal lives might be defended in the context of the emergence of modern notions of rights, leading to a new approach to family law which the author prefers to call ‘personal law’.
Rajnaara Akhtar considers two cases from the European Court of Human Rights, Munoz Diaz v Spain 2009 and Serife Yugit v Turkey 2010, involving unregistered informal marriages, and asks whether the court’s position is challenged by migrants and refugees whose access to formal marriage may be impeded by a lack of identity and status documentation.
Finally, we are most grateful to our Case Notes editors for the international scope of contributions from Peter Dunne on ‘In the Matter of M (Children)’ and Eleanor Rowan on undue influence and prenuptial contract in Australia.
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