Press Releases

This will take place Saturday 4th November, both on-line and in-person at the Mechanics Centre Ltd, 103 Princess Street, Manchester M1 6DD. We will be sending soon links to register both for the conference and (members only) the AGM.

We are once again honoured to have Sir Andrew McFarlane, the President of the Family Division, address our conference along with (tbc) Jacky Tiotto, Chief Executive of Cafcass. Other speakers include Dr Sue Whitcombe, Counselling psychologist and Chair of British Psychological Society Division of Counselling Psychology, and Professor Ben Hine, Professor of Applied Psychology, University of West London.

The conference is in the morning to which everyone is welcome - there will be a £15 charge per person for in-person attendance and £5 per person online. Lunch is provided after which our Annual General Meeting, including a CEO update and future plans, will follow in the afternoon.

All members are encouraged to attend and take part in discussions, though you need to have been a fully-paid up member for a year to be eligible to vote. Please look out for the registration links to follow soon. 

The FNF Team  

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FNF has significant reserves, but we will now be spending more than our income. We need to revert that if we are to keep him in the medium term, let alone do more. 

We need more members!!

A subscription to FNF costs less than 8 minutes of the time of a mid-range solicitor. Good value? We know so. This subscription gives you access to a forum run by professionals, solicitor's clinic in London, discounts for our courses and supervised contact in the community, to mention a few.

But what you personally get out of it is not the main reason for joining. The principal one should be this – to help reduce the risk that our children (especially sons) will encounter the same problems as we do now, and, of course, to increase children's welfare after divorce of separation. 

Is finding new members, donating and renewing, something we should be doing for them?

Alienation Support Group – A growing and supportive group. (LINK)

The Alienation Support Group meets online on the last Monday of every month. There is also a monitored WhatsApp support group. You can join the group by clicking the link above, where details of the meeting will be posted closer to the date.

Surviving Separation – Putting the children first (LINK)

The next delivery of this popular 8-week online course will be starting on September 5th. Details of the course and the opportunity to sign up are available on the website on the above link. All welcome, discount for members (HINT – join first then apply for the course – double discount).

PA SUPPORT GROUP 

SURVIVING COURSE 

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I’m sure many of you will be aware of reporting put up on the BBC News website and broadcast on BBC News earlier this week: 

Family courts: Children forced into contact with fathers accused of abuse - BBC News LINK

Family courts: 'We kidnapped our kids from abusive dads and fled the UK’ - BBC News LINK

BBC News - The Issue, Mums On The Run: Failed By The Family Court LINK

On behalf of FNF, I am writing to the BBC journalist, Ed Thomas, and BBC editors inviting them to meet us and to publish a more balanced article based on facts and evidence.  We are also contacting other media organisations in relation to the bias and lack of impartiality in the BBC reporting. 

If not already done so, we encourage FNF members and users to complain to the BBC using its complaints service -  https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/make-a-complaint/#/Complaint LINK Please express this as you wish based on your own experience and viewpoint, but features of the articles include:

- the use of partial research of extreme cases with a seemingly pre-determined conclusion

- minimal effort to seek balancing evidence, data or viewpoints. 

- dismissal of all too real alienating behaviours (and the consequent damage to parents, children and extended family) as merely an alleging tactic used by abusive fathers 

- no reference to child psychology experts on the damaging effects of alienating behaviours or abduction

- no examination of the potential for allegations of abuse to be false

- no examples of male suicide despite widespread recognition (including in the NHS) that separation from children is a significant factor in male suicide (which is itself 3 times higher than for women)

We will of course, in our meetings with government, the judiciary and other services, continue to push for evidence-based, child-centred solutions which support equality of parenting opportunities for both parents.

Sam Morfey, CEO

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Today’s Family Lawyer reports that family court delays see children waiting a year to finalise living arrangements LINK

This is based on new data supplied by the Ministry of Justice and shows an upward trend since 2016.

This is not news to our members who regularly report delays of much more than one year. What’s more the number of cases where neither party was represented was 40%, an increase of 300% since legal aid was cut in 2013. These delays simply cements into place the existing living arrangements for the child and provides an opportunity for unprincipled parents to alienate their children against the non-resident parent.

These court delays are a form of child abuse infrequently considered in CAFCASS reports.  Court delay and contact refusal by the residential parents for no good reason is against the welfare of our children, and serves to exhaust the capacity, mentally and financially, of the other party to continue. It is the courts and CAFCASS who are the main culprits. 

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I’m now into my fourth week on the job and have taken the opportunity to meet some of the various volunteer groups within FNF and to work on our 3-year strategic plan. That is still taking shape but one of the key priorities, as well as improving our internal organisation and external campaigning, will be to support our branches and volunteers with better communication, learning and sharing. A monthly update from me in this newsletter should also help with that.

As well as working with the board on aspects of the internal organisation since starting, myself and our chair, Paul O’Callaghan, have managed to secure meetings with senior officials within the Ministry of Justice and Department for Work of Pensions; we see these as key, ongoing relationships and will be using them to push the case for reform, both to the family court system and to child maintenance. As well as providing vital support to our service users, helping to change the current system will be key to moving to proper shared parenting in this country.

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