Cafcass are carrying out a review of the way they deliver their information, and support to parents, in particular the Separated Parent Information Programmes (SPIPs).
To assist with this they have prepared a survey that should take approximately 10 minutes to complete. The closing date is 30th December 2021.
We have provided feedback to Cafcass on their proposal already.
In broad terms, SPIPs are good and have some good content. Cafcass recommend these in the course of family court proceedings and they are then free. However, this rarely happens until well into court proceedings by which time conflict tends to escalate and it is simply too late. In this respect, the proposal to offer SPIP education for parents BEFORE a first hearing seems like a positive step, so long as this does not delay the date of a first hearing - time is the enemy of children and their non-resident parent! Indeed, helping parents to understand the harm to children of conflict, delay and inappropriate withholding of contact seems like a good thing not just before court, but even before mediation. If progress is made between an application being made and the first hearing, the hearing can always be cancelled or used to rubber stamp any agreement reached.
Please complete the survey, based on your own experience and views.
Other points you may wish to consider are:
- Encourage early pre-hearing SPIPs
- Make SPIPs compulsory for both parents before the first hearing, but after setting a date for it (to avoid further delay).
- No exceptions for domestic abuse allegations – better parenting behaviour by parents is still desirable, whatever the outcomes of investigations.
- Make them as interactive as possible – check ID of participants, ask questions as they go, etc (not self-guided online only).
- Make people repeat it if inattentive (they do this kind of thing online on driver speed awareness courses very effectively).
- Report back to court if a parent does not complete it - so the court is aware of who is or is not taking the best interests of children seriously.
- Propose the creation of Parenting Plan – out of court and/or for court should out-of-court resolution fail - again it would show who is being reasonable and who is not.
- Extend the scope to cover:
- Downside of court – cost, stress, delay, damage to children
- Include examples of (alienating) behaviours or denigration that might result hiding their true feelings e.g. showing upset if a child says something positive about a parent, resulting in them next time only reporting negative things (that are received more sympathetically)
- Offer guidance of what might be reasonable arrangements based on whether parents, prior to separation had 50/50 care, current distances apart, etc, thus avoiding litigation just to find out what a judge might decide
- Cover long-term effect on children of loss of parent/half of family & friends attachments.
The link to the survey can be found here.
You can read our former article on SPIPs here and on Early Intervention Pathways here.
7th December 2021
What do you think?
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