Separating parents forced to attend custody classes so they realise damage to children
(Daily Mirror Report; Sat 25th Sept 2010)
Divorcing parents are being forced to go to custody classes so that they realise the damage their separation inflicts on their children, it was revealed today.
Couples in Surrey, where the scheme is being piloted, have to go to two free evening sessions in the hope they will reconsider their behaviour.
Surrey has become the test county for the programme after district judge Alison Raeside championed it and made it compulsory, according to The Times.
The sessions are not forced on couples where either side could be in any danger and are funded by Cafcass, the children's courts service.
Classes: Parents in Surrey are having custody coaching so that they realise the effect of their separation on their children
Partners will not be sent to the same class and are placed with up to 10 others.
The current family law review could see the Separation Parent Information Programme rolled out across England and Wales.
Early results apparently indicate more than half of parents' change their behaviour because of the classes.
Details of the scheme emerged days after a senior judge warned middle-class parents can damage their children permanently by using them as ammunition in the divorce courts.
Broadside: Sir Nicholas Wall said that in family break-ups parents rarely behave reasonably and intelligent parents are often the worst
Lord Justice Wall, the country's leading family judge, told warring husbands and wives: 'There is nothing worse for most children than for their parents to denigrate each other.'
He said that in family break-ups parents rarely behave reasonably and intelligent parents are often the worst.
'Often the parties are fighting over again the battles of the relationship, and the children are both the battlefield and the ammunition,' he said.
His broadside came in a speech on reforms to the family justice system in which he said it was vital to reduce the adversarial nature of the divorce courts.
He also attacked his fellow judges for allowing some cases to go before as many as ten different judges.
Having one judge sit in all the hearings involving a family is essential to provide consistency, Lord Justice Wall said.
In his speech to the pressure group Families Need Fathers, he said: 'Separating parents who are unable to resolve issues between themselves rarely act reasonably.
'People think that post-separation parenting is easy. In fact, it is exceedingly difficult, and as a rule of thumb my experience is that the more intelligent the parent, the more intractable the dispute.
'Parents often find it difficult to understand that children both love and have a loyalty to both parents. There is nothing worse, for most children, than for their parents to denigrate each other.
'To use the trite phrase, each parent represents 50 per cent of the child's gene pool. If a child's mother makes it clear to the child that his or her father is worthless - and vice versa - the child's sense of self-worth can be irredeemably damaged.
'Parents simply do not realise the damage they do to their children by the battles they wage over them. A child is not a piece of property which can be parcelled up and moved around at will.'
Mr Justice Wall said that it was legitimate to criticise the family courts over the number of judges who become involved in a case.
He said that, while working as an Appeal Court judge, he found 'cases in which as many as nine or ten judges had all dealt with the same case.
'Each had had to read the papers: each had had to make a decision and, inevitably, the decisions are sometimes inconsistent,' he said. 'In short, there is a total lack of judicial continuity.
'For a number of judges all to have to read the same bundle of papers is not only a waste of valuable judicial time: it is inefficient and leads to inconsistency.'
Lord Justice Wall made his speech in the midst of a review into the family courts, which handle parental separation, child custody, fostering, adoption and also 'public' cases concerning children removed from dangerous homes by social workers.
Around 20,000 family break-ups come before the courts every year, and fathers' pressure groups have been increasingly vocal about alleged bias in favour of mothers.
There have been a number of demonstrations against the failure of the courts to act against mothers who shut fathers out of their children's lives.
The Labour government considered tagging mothers to punish those who fail to abide by court orders but the idea was dropped
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