The 'Secret' Family Court: Fact Or Fiction?

Introduction
do so for the sake of convenience though that description is not strictly
accurate. Prior to April 2014 there was no single, unified Family Court in
England and Wales. It was more accurate to refer to ‘family courts’ than to
a ‘Family Court’. Family law work was dealt with in the Family Division
of the High Court, the County Court and the Family Proceedings Court.
The Family Procedure Rules 2010 came into force in April 2011. Until then
different rules governed the work in each of the three tiers of court which
dealt with family law cases. The Family Procedure Rules apply to all three
tiers. Their implementation was an important step along the road towards
the creation of a single Family Court in April 2014. 10
The work of the Family Court covers a wide range of different types of case
including, for example, public and private law cases relating to children,
cases relating to marriage, divorce and dissolution of civil partnerships, applications
for financial remedies following divorce and dissolution of civil
partnerships, applications for domestic violence injunctions, for forced
marriage protection orders and for female genital mutilation protection orders.
The issue of transparency arises in many areas of the work conducted
in the Family Court. In this book I am only concerned with the issue of
transparency in public and private law Children Act cases dealt with in the
Family Court.
Cases in the Family Court are heard by Judges of the Family Division of
the High Court, by Circuit Judges, by District Judges and by lay justices
(magistrates). Cases are allocated to a particular tier of judge according to
complexity. This book is written from the perspective of a Circuit Judge.
Family Court judgments that are published are normally anonymised so
that the child concerned and his or her family cannot be identified. Anonymisation
is likely to include not only withholding the name of the child and
his or her family but, for example, not giving details of the place or area
where the family lives or the name of the school which the child attends
or the name of the hospital where the child is being treated. Omitting that
kind of information is not controversial. But what about the identities of
local authorities, social workers, Children’s Guardians, health care staff and
expert witnesses? Must they always be named in judgments or are there
circumstances in which it is appropriate for their identity, too, to be anonymised?
This is an important issue which I address in Chapter 8.
The next part of my review deals with the role of the media. I have been
greatly assisted by discussions with ten journalists: Sanchia Berg (Reporter,
10
This was established by section 17 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013.
7