Attachment Theory and the Family Violence Reforms

I have made several references to various evaluations of the 2006 shared parentingreforms and it is appropriate at this point for me to identify the reports and describe thekey findings.There were three major reports, namely:• the Family Courts Violence Review, undertaken by Professor Richard Chisholm andreleased in November 2009• the Evaluation of the 2006 family law reforms, undertaken by the Australian Instituteof Family Studies and released in December 2009• a review by the Family Law Council, culminating in the report Improving responsesto family violence in the family law system: An advice on the intersection of familyviolence and family law issues, released in December 2009.Consistent with what I said earlier, it is fair to say that there is a thematic commonalityemerging from the three reports as to widespread misunderstandings arising from the wayin which the legislation is expressed, which necessarily has implications for children’ssafety, security and wellbeing.I will briefly discuss each report in turn and especially what they have to say aboutmessages “radiating” from the shared parenting reforms.I will first address the Chisholm Family Courts Family Violence Review. The followingquote neatly summarises the findings made by Professor Chisholm, who incidentally is aformer judge of the Family Court of Australia. He states:The conclusions emerging from the Family Violence Review suggest that withhindsight it can be seen that some of the techniques used in those amendmentshave proved confusing and troublesome. In particular, many people seem to have18