Keeping children within the family: Changing patterns in the use of special guardianship orders

Special Guardianship Orders (SGOs) provide family courts with an alternative to adoption, typically through permanent placement within the extended family. Using court administrative data, this study charts the use of SGOs as a way of promoting stability and recovery for these vulnerable children who cannot remain safely with their parents. The study cohort is based on administrative population data produced routinely by Cafcass and accessed via the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank at Swansea University. The unit of analysis is children subject to s.31 care and supervision proceedings in England between 2007/08 and 2021/22, providing a retrospective observational window of fifteen years. Descriptive statistics were used to compare SGOs to other permanency final legal orders (placement, child arrangements, supervision and no order), and survival modelling was employed to look at stability over time and return to court. Finally, regional and over time variations in the data were examined. The percentage of children placed on a SGO as a proportion of all children subject to s.31 proceedings rose from 12% to 18% between 2011/12 and 2021/22. Over the same period the percentage of children with a placement order that frees the way for adoption fell from 24% to 14%. This shift in pattern was more pronounced than for any other legal order we examined for children unable to remain with birth parents. The highest usage per region was in the North East and London and the lowest was in the Midlands. We estimate that 9% of children on SGOs would return to court within 10 years. Older children (5-17 years old) were more likely to return to court after SGOs than younger children. The study showed that SGOs have become a main route out of public care, outstripping the use of placement orders. These findings have major implications for policy and practice. They demonstrate that special guardianship provides a stable and sustainable permanency option for children unable to remain with their birth parents

The co-occurrence of substance misuse, domestic abuse, and child maltreatment: Can Family Drug and Alcohol Courts play a part?

This review article focuses on the inter-relationship between substance misuse, domestic abuse, and child maltreatment, especially in the context of care (child protection) proceedings. It reviews what is known about the prevalence and impact of co-occurring domestic abuse and substance misuse on adult and child victims, and the response of criminal and family law and intervention programmes in supporting families to address these problems holistically. Special attention is paid to the role of Family Drug and Alcohol Courts (FDACs), a radical problem-solving approach to care proceedings, which provide integrated interventions to the range of co-occurring problems that trigger the proceedings. Despite clear evidence of the greater harm to children when exposed to these two parental difficulties, the review has found a lack of systematic information on the prevalence of co-occurrence and a lack of effective integrated interventions, including within care proceedings. It argues that the FDAC approach is well suited to respond to co-occurring substance misuse and domestic abuse in care proceedings and it has the potential to break down silos across sectors. However, in the absence of empirical evidence, this premise would need testing. A particular focus of the review has been on efforts to overcome silos in practice, law and policy. Promising initiatives are described in criminal and family law to improve the response to domestic abuse that build on the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, the first dedicated domestic abuse legislation in England and Wales. All of them are based on problem-solving approaches used in other jurisdictions. Despite these initiatives, the review concludes that there remain significant barriers to effectively align law, policy and practice to ensure that domestic abuse strategy recognizes and responds to the overlaps with substance misuse

Introducing the highlights from: problem solving in court: current practice in FDACs in England.

The FDAC (Family drug and alcohol court) problem-solving approach in court is about hearing cases in a collaborative rather than an adversarial manner. FDAC’s main features are judicial continuity, fortnightly judge-led review hearings without lawyers present where judges use motivational interviewing techniques with parents, encouraging parents to seize every opportunity to turn their lives around for the benefit of their children. In early 2016, expanding on their 2014 research, Lancaster University and Ryan Tunnard Brown undertook a review of FDAC problem-solving court practices. The study consisted of observations of 46 hearings in 10 FDAC courts. The study had two main aims. The first was to test whether FDAC judges are currently using a problem-solving approach during court hearings. The second was to collect the views of judges about differences between FDAC and ordinary care proceedings, local implementation of the FDAC model, and the value of extending its problem-solving approach to other types of care cases. The findings are very positive. The researchers found clear evidence that adherence to the principles and practice of the FDAC problem-solving approach is at the heart of the FDAC courts, and that the judges were unanimous in their support for the FDAC approach which they described as a more compassionate way of responding to the parental difficulties that put children at risk of harm. The study made a strong case for: continuing to roll out and sustain the FDAC model; ensure fidelity to the FDAC model through initial and ongoing training by the FDAC National Unit; and generate local and national discussion about which other types of care proceedings would benefit from the FDAC approach. Their data collection and analysis focused on evidence of the following principles and practice being in place. Problem-solving principles focusing on the FDAC process: 1. Enhanced information (to and from all parties) 2. A collaborative approach (solving problems through joint thinking and action) 3. Fair decision making (using a non-adversarial and an honest, transparent approach) 4. Judicial review and monitoring (by a specially-trained judge) 5. A focus on outcomes (to achieve the changes needed in parental behaviour and lifestyle). Problem-solving activity focusing on Judges practice: 1. talking to parents 2. inviting their views 3. expressing interest in their progress 4. acknowledging family strengths 5. offering praise to parents 6. explaining the aims of FDAC 7. explaining decisions made 8. urging parents to take responsibility for their actions, including the consequences of prioritising their own needs over those of their children, and 9. using time in court to tackle the range of problems faced by parents (that is, using a problem-solving approach)

Tensions and contradictions in family court innovation with high risk parents:the place of family drug treatment courts in contemporary family justice

Parental substance misuse is a leading factor in child abuse and neglect and frequently results in court-mandated permanent child removal. Family drug treatment courts, which originated in the USA and are only found in adversarial family justice systems, are a radical innovation to tackle this problem. Unlike ordinary court, they treat parents within the court arena as well as adjudicating, and in this way they seek to draw a new balance between parental needs and the child’s right to timely permanency. Family drug treatment courts have spread to England, Australia and Northern Ireland and international research has found they have higher rates of parental substance misuse cessation and family reunification and lower foster care costs than ordinary courts. Yet their growth has been far from straightforward. In the USA they have not kept pace with the rise of criminal drug treatment courts and in England and Australia their numbers remain small. The central purpose of this article is to explore why the family drug treatment movement has not achieved wider impact and to consider opportunities and challenges for its future development. To address these questions we draw on evidence and experience from the USA, England and Australia. We discuss the operational challenges, tensions between children’s needs for stability and parental timescales for recovery, the impact of wider economic and political change, and issues in data evaluation. We conclude that despite the promise of family drug treatment courts as a new paradigm to address risky parenting, effecting systemic change in the courts is extremely difficult