 F powerful, and welcome to the fifth meeting of session six of the Qualities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. We have apologies this morning from Pam Duncan Grancy. Fylthe MacGregor and Colonel Adam are joining us virtually. First, the gender item is to consider whether to take item five on correspondence from the Covid-19 Recovery Committee in private. Would you repeat that Please fulfill me un��d yma, the fewer places special p ti Paidio'r sgol teulu ar gyfer o'r mewn amser o gyfer o'r ysbyt ymddlant o'r desglaethau'r amser. Rhywbodaeth wrth gwrs i gyfer. ladw i'r wych o'r maidiaeth hynny, Judith Higgson, Gwyd, Fiwr, Ffnifiwr, a Ffnifiwr Oeddiol, maidio'r Scottish Rheid sinswr, Leslie Anderson, twf,のでart o'r Ffnifiwr Ffnifiwr, Dr Marcia Scott, Pwendedf ar Gwaethau, Scottish Women's Aid, Welcome Ruth Innes, QC faculty of advocates, Megan Farre, policy officer, children and young people's commissioner Scotland, Ian Maxwell, national manager, shared parenting Scotland and Roseanna Cupid, head of practice for family mediation and relationship counselling, relationship Scotland. You are all very welcome. I refer members to papers 1, 2 and 3, and I invite each of the participants to make a very brief opening statement, starting with our witnesses in the room. Can I ask Ruth Innes, please? Do I? Okay, I couldn't remember. On behalf of the faculty, thank you very much for inviting us to attend today's roundtable discussion. The faculty was obviously engaged in responding to the consultation in advance of the 2020 act and has since then responded to the consultation in respect of child welfare reporters and also the recent Scottish Civil Justice Council consultations in relation to rules in respect of mode of attendance at court hearings. In respect of the pandemic, it is generally felt that in family cases the courts have made every effort to keep cases moving irrespective of the difficulties that have been occasioned. As we hopefully move forward, we have welcomed the recognition in the SEJC consultation that family hearings, other than those of a purely procedural nature, are best dealt with in person, albeit preserving the option for remote hearings or for evidence to be taken remotely if that's appropriate, for example if a party is a vulnerable witness. One of the concerns strongly expressed by members of faculty is the on-going use of telephone hearings, which has been found to be unsatisfactory in a number of respects. In relation to child welfare reporters, the faculty responded to the Scottish Government consultation last year. Obviously, we are of the view that more training and a more regulated system is to be welcomed, however our general view is that it should continue to be managed by the courts. In terms of challenges facing parents and children, I know others will highlight other issues, so I just want to highlight one issue, which is the difficulty in accessing therapeutic input or expert psychological support. I think that that's an issue that affects families and young people in general, but not just in cases before the court, but that's simply an issue to be highlighted. Thank you. My name is Megan Fire, and I'm a policy officer for the Children and Young People's Commissioner Scotland. The commissioner's role is to promote and safeguard the human rights of children and young people in Scotland, with particular attention to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. We provided evidence to the former Justice Committee regarding the Children's Scotland Act 2020 at both stage 1, 2 and 3, and we also provided our all evidence on that. We continue to be concerned, as Ruth reports, around the impact of virtual hearings on children and young people, particularly on their right to participate in proceedings when their decisions are being made about them. Thank you. Iain. Thank you very much for inviting shared parenting Scotland to this event. Covid and lockdown created many issues and challenges for separated parents and their children. In some cases, communication between separated parents improved as they worked together against the pandemic. Unfortunately for many others, communication just stopped along with contact. Closure of courts and contact centres caused massive delays to the progress of cases. While we appreciate the efforts of so many within the courts and support services to catch up, what is often referred to as a backlog of cases to us could mean the loss of months or years of relationship between a child and one of their parents. We welcomed the initial triaging of family cases that started when the courts were closed. That was used to identify urgent business, for example if contact was being unreasonably withheld. We appreciate the efforts made by so many within the system to get back to something like normal as soon as possible, but we feel that Covid highlighted to us just how unsatisfactory normal is in Scotland. It is slow, unpredictable, inconsistent between courts and shockingly expensive. In the name of seeking the best interests of the child, our adversarial system pits parents against each other, precisely when they need maximum help in focusing on what will be best for their children next week, next year and into adulthood. Now that we've had a taste of it, a form of early triaging could inject a sense of urgency into the whole court system. Months of a child's life shouldn't be allowed to slip by because the system is slow. The Cochum family court in Germany found that such a radical change worked very well. Cases there have a first hearing in two weeks, not two months. This would allow contact to restart as soon as possible the best outcome for the child, in a contact centre if there's concern about safety or abuse, but unsupervised where there's no such concern. The Covid time has revealed what a blunt instrument our system is, but the world to try something new during the restriction should be continued. Separating parents need to be supported to help their children cope with new arrangements, not punished by having to go to court. We've just launched New Ways for Families, which is a combination of online training and one-to-one coaching that gives parents the skills to problem-solve on their own account. Relationship Scotland already offered parenting apart training sessions. 44 per cent of civil legal aid is spent on family cases, a total of £57 million per year. Increasing the amount that is spent on supporting and training separated parents to reach agreement would save lots of money on family court actions, which would help them and above all their children to enjoy the benefits of shared parenting. I'm head of practice at Relationship Scotland. We are a network of 21 member services providing a range of support to families with relationship difficulties. In the context of family law, we work with families with issues arising from separation and divorce, contact and residence disputes. This is primarily through family mediation, which helps parents to discuss and agree arrangements for the care of their children, and through the provision of child contact centres that support children to have a relationship with the parent or carer that they no longer live with. We also offer counselling for adults, children and young people and, as Ian said, parent education sessions, which we call parenting apart. We welcome the opportunity to give feedback to the committee about the general issues in this area of work and about the impact of the pandemic. I've sought feedback from our member agencies that provide mediation, child contact and parenting apart. A number of themes are recurring and have actually been recurring for many years and remain an issue. We would summarise them as adequate risk assessment prior to co-orders being made to ensure that cases that are referred, particularly for child contact, are appropriate. We do a risk assessment in terms of provision of the service, but further up the line the court is making an order. The question is whether that contact order is appropriate, so adequate risk assessment prior to a co-order being made. Secondly, realistic co-orders that reflect what can be provided on the ground. Orders are sometimes made for a frequency of contact or on a timescale that can't be achieved with the resources available, so greater communication with the provision on the ground would be helpful for families. Communication and information that we get from the court, particularly to allow the child contact centre to then make their assessment of supporting that action. Some courts only send the order, some send reports and assessments, which can be really helpful. Hearing children's views, we have a really strong view that this is really specialist work and it's critical that it's undertaken by skilled workers. Not all of those who are doing this work have undertaken adequate training, particularly in terms of trauma safeguarding child development. In terms of the pandemic and the resulting delays that others have alluded to in the court process, particular issues for families have been much longer breaks for children not seeing their parents, so re-establishing those relationships takes longer and is harder. It has escalated in more entrenched conflict, so it has had longer in that adversarial process, so that takes longer to de-escalate. Significantly more mental health issues and anxieties for children, parents and practitioners. We are seeing practitioners needing a lot more support for what they have had to deal with through the pandemic. Longer waiting lists for child contact support because of the need for more cleaning for your family's lack of venue availability. Our child contact centre support has longer waiting lists. We have adapted our practice so that we can offer mediation on Zoom, so that is working well. We do not have waiting lists for mediation, but direct work with children is less effective on video conferencing technology, and it is important for children to spend time with other parents in person. A broader point to conclude is that a range of support can be provided by a Relationship Scotland that is holistic, therapeutic, impartial and not connected with the court process. If families were referred much earlier, prior to the escalation of conflict through the court system, we would be able to work with them and provide an integrated package of support that would be a cost saving to the public purse. It works well alongside the legal process if they need a determination. In terms of the secondary legislation, we have submitted detailed responses to the various consultations and contribute to meetings with the Scottish Government. We are supportive of all the developments that have been raised in the secondary legislation. I guess that our main frustration is the delay to the implementation of the pilot of ADR information meetings. We appreciate that it is not a top priority and that Covid has impacted on the progress of that, but there is a danger of it being overly complicated and unnecessarily delayed. Hello, good morning, and thank you for inviting the Law Society's sub-committee on child and family law to give evidence today. We have also responded to most of the consultations mentioned by InSQC. We consider it important to look at matters on a case-by-case basis, looking at any individual child's needs and to look for flexible and creative solutions to assist families and parents in dispute. We also consider it important not to put responsibility for decision making on children. The decision makers obviously need to understand things from the child's point of view, but asking children to make their decisions themselves is too much responsibility. Our general theme is that we already have a lot of legislation to achieve what we consider to be our desired goals. We do not need to reinvent the wheel, and we can look at the legislation that we have and adapt that. We support the regulation of child contact centres and the regulation of welfare reporters. We welcome the work that is being done on ADR. Generally, access to support and funding are important to consider. Some more specific challenges that we have seen as a result of the pandemic are examples of parents using the pandemic to act belligerently and withhold contact time from the other parent. We have seen some parents co-operate better than others. Some parents may have been shielding, and there have been instances of disputes and differences of opinion arising over the necessity of those types of situations. Parents have also had to consider the position of vulnerable grandparents and how to manage children's time with them safely. That might have impacted on the other parents' time with the child when disputes have arisen from that. Some parents have lost the support of childcare provided by grandparents who have become vulnerable because of the pandemic. There have been occasions when parents have been more likely to look for alternative solutions as opposed to going to court as a result of the potential for delays in raising court proceedings caused by the pandemic. There are challenges with the court system in terms of solicitors getting papers from the court when we are presenting parties or children. The solicitor's ability to communicate with the Sheriff Clark's office was severely impacted. Evidential hearings have been challenging as everybody grappled with the technology. There have been impacts on trainee solicitors in terms of getting exposure to the court system, and solicitors have been advised by certain jurisdictions not to contact the court for updates in cases because of a lack of staff at work as a result of them requiring to self-isolate or being unwell. I will leave it there for now. That is probably enough for an opening statement, and I can flesh out anything that has been required. Good morning, and thank you for the invitation. I appear today as chair of the Family Law Association, which is a network of family law practitioners across Scotland. We have around 350 members. The Family Law Association provides training to family law solicitors and has responded to the consultations mentioned by Ruth Innes QC. We also provide a forum and a mechanism for information sharing across the members in terms of updates on family law. That is my voluntary work. My day job is a solicitor advocate who is accredited as a specialist in child law and second life family law. I am a court-pointed child welfare reporter, Curitrix Adletham, and Porting Officer. I have also written articles on the development of the court process through Covid and also advocacy in the virtual court. One of the things that has been on my radar very much has been what I would call a swell in Covid contact cases, both in terms of being a solicitor advocate hearing for parties, but also as a child welfare reporter and all the issues mentioned by Ian. I very much agree with that there is a huge gap for children in being able to see one or other of their parents because of Covid. The other thing that is really at the forefront is interviewing children. I am interviewing children at least once a week as a child welfare reporter and as a Curitrix. I am being asked to interview younger and younger children in respect to their views being available to the court to take account of in terms of making decisions. Thank you for the opportunity to give evidence this morning. Good morning. I am really delighted to be invited to speak about the issues that are of supreme importance. I am the chief executive of Scottish Women's Aid, and we are both a women's rights organisation and a children's rights organisation. We care very much about the outcomes of some of the questions on today's agenda. I will also be appearing tomorrow morning to give evidence to the criminal justice committee in some of its discussions. I think that that points out one of our concerns about the new arrangements of committees after the previous election. There seems to be both a good and a bad outcome. My concerns are that civil law and criminal law—I understand that the workload issues involved—have been separated. One of the concerns that we have about the way that Scotland's justice system operates for children is that there is a chasm between criminal and civil justice procedures, which means that information from criminal cases involving domestic abuse and harm and trauma to children and their mothers very rarely makes its way—information from those cases very rarely makes its way efficiently and robustly into civil hearings around child contact. We have been trying very hard to bridge that chasm by having children identified as co-victims in criminal cases. We failed to get that into the new domestic abuse law, and there is an ongoing problem that having them considered separately by two different committees we are worried will exacerbate. However, if it means that there is more attention being paid to civil justice because a different committee has gotten it, we are all happy about that all over that, as I would say. I welcome the committee's invitation and its interest in contact centres, etc., in part because the vast majority of women who contact the Scottish Women's Aid and a variety of civil legal aid offices do so. Domestic abuse survivors are domestic abuse cases that are engaging in child contact processes, so this is an absolutely critical issue, and I hope you forgive me because I do have a few things to say about it. First of all, I find myself in the very unusual circumstance of agreeing with Ian Maxwell. I, too, do not understand the system's desires to rush back to a status quo that was totally unacceptable prior to Covid in terms of face-to-face and virtual proceeding and delays in the system in a whole variety of other systemic problems that deny children their human rights. It is worth pointing out that, in my view and in our view, the entire civil justice system around family law needs to be reframed in terms of CRC, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and in terms of Scotland's obligations to allow children to realise their human rights. I will point out that, if you look at the attendees at this panel, we are a children's rights organisation. I am very delighted to see Megan from the Children's Commissioner's office, but that is the extent of the representation of children's rights on this panel. I would ask for reflection on that. I wish to point out that I want to challenge the assumptions in a number of the speakers before me that shared parenting and or child contact could always be assumed to be a positive impact on children's lives. I will talk a little bit about what the children that we serve tell us about how the system operates. I think that it is probably worth saying that we really need to scrutinise our system, because we are still operating, even though perhaps not formally but informally, as if children are, at best, irrelevant in these proceedings and at worst collateral damage. In some senses, we still treat them as property, often as property of their father. We need to be willing to challenge the assumptions that have operated for hundreds of years in our civil processes. I think that, at the moment, it would be really worth pointing out that the elephant in the room often in discussions about access to justice is the availability of legal services, which, as Covid has very much exacerbated for children and also for their mothers in domestic abuse cases. I can tell you that there is a crisis at the moment, especially from our services in Highlands and Islands about getting access not even just to legal aid lawyers but to solicitors in general to help them in civil cases. I like to call it that we have great access to injustice system. I would like to point out that the Government has accepted recommendations both from the improving women and children's housing outcomes of women and children who are experiencing domestic abuse report and from the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls recommendations that women and children living with domestic abuse be offered free legal services and representation, and we are not releasing much action on that. I would hope that the committee would pick that up and pursue it. I am going to ask the committee a question that is really important for us to think about and answer over the next years of this Parliament. It was posed by a child in one of our services, and I will point to our consultation response, which was extensive and based on consultation with mothers and children and service providers in terms of the contact centre consultation. One of the children asked, do children have a right to end an abusive relationship? Clearly, in Scotland, they do not at this moment. We have the persistence of this notion that there is something called parental alienation, which masquerades in the consultation as understanding the way that adults can influence a child. I have no idea how that got in there, especially given that parental alienation has been taken off the World Health Organization's list of child abuses for lack of evidence. We had 14 academics from across the UK who wrote to previous cabinet secretary for justice explaining how parental alienation charges in child contact cases serve to silence and exacerbate and retraumatise the existing power differential and the outcomes of abuse with no creditable evidence in research literature. We know in Spain that they have outlawed the use of parental alienation and similar claims in child contact cases, yet it pops up again in the Government's consultations. I think it would be of interest to ask if we wanted to look at training on understanding how adults interact with children, why we are not asking understanding perpetrators' behaviours and how that impacts children, understanding how non-offending parents work to protect their children. Those are all a number of sort of strength-based approaches to helping child contact centre staff to do their job. I encourage the committee to see below some of the assumptions about what parents might be doing to protect or abuse their children. I will read to you just one quick thing and then I will finish with a statement from the children that gave evidence to the Justice Committee. In our consultation of 2021, a woman spoke of a child quote having to be ripped from her arms by contact centre staff. Her child clutching contact staff, who she hardly knew and refusing to let go when brought into the room with her dad, then overheard her child screaming in another room during contact. Since she has been accused by her ex-partner of alienating a child from him, she then felt unable to voice legitimate concerns about how she and her child have been treated, about the impact on her child, about her fear of the response from the staff that she complained, and when feeling the need to seek protection for her child. Finally, a statement from one of our young experts in a European project that we did on court-ordered child contact. It was quite hard to tell the child welfare reporter how I felt. The first one was strict and polite, but not smiley. When she came to my dad's house to ask me how my day went, I would say out loud that it was fun, but I would try to nudge her and hint to her that I won't be able to tell the truth in my dad's house, but she ignored it. My dad told me that he wanted me to give him a hug, even though I didn't like him and I did it anyway, but the court reporter wrote in her report that I was happy to give him a hug. She didn't see what was really going on. When I would tell her later on, she would say that I was lying. She would interrupt me and stop me from talking, and then I would stutter and not be able to say what I wanted or how I felt. We are now going to move to questions. I will ask members to indicate who they are, obviously the seven panel members, so indicate who they want to answer their questions. Clearly, if other people want to come in, if you could indicate—and I will try to bring people in the name—that we have a bit of a discussion, we will try to intersperse hearing views of the panel with questions from the committee. If we move on and you still have something to say that you have heard earlier, then please take the opportunity to make sure that you get your point on the record. It is quite a big panel, so my chairing will not be seamless. It is just too difficult, otherwise we would be here all day or going around every single member for every single comment. The other thing that I would say is that this is a starting point for the committee in this area. We will look at everything that we hear today and decide what more we want to do. To kick questions off, I go to Maggie Chapman. Thanks very much, Joe. Good morning to everybody. Thank you for joining us and for your opening remarks. You have covered a lot of ground and a lot of different issues. I was struck by what both Ian and Marsha said around that the old normal really is not good enough. It is not satisfactory, it is not working for anybody. I wonder if, maybe Ian, you could say a little bit more, and Megan, I will bring you in as well, if that is okay. Just around some of the experiences of why the pandemic has shown just how bad the old normal was and what it is that we can perhaps think of doing better. One of the things that is in all of this for me is that conflict, tension between the welfare of the child and their rights to be heard and their rights to have their views expressed. I would be interested in how you balance those experiences with that welfare versus rights conflict or how I perceive it as a conflict. Yes, that is something that has been touched on a couple of times in the evidence so far. Obviously, the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, assuming that it does happen, will make quite a big difference to a lot of public authorities because they realise that they will have to take children more seriously. One of the things that happens at the moment is that sometimes sheriffs will write letters to children and will tell children what has happened. We feel that this should happen in almost every case where a significant decision is made in court. The child needs to be informed directly and in child-friendly language. Some sheriffs can do this, but we would also like to see all judgments in court cases published because there is a lot of, obviously, in an anonymous form so that the individuals concerned are not labelled by it, but the judgments that are made in court are often very difficult ones. I am thinking of one that I read from last year, in which, after a lot of detailed consideration, the sheriff concluded that a child had been adversely influenced by the resident parent, who happened to be the mother, but could have been the father, and that the child's rejection of her father was not justified. However, because the child was old enough to have a very firm view of what she wanted at the moment, the judgment was not to force her to go back to see that parent, but the sheriff did write a letter to that child, saying, I feel that your father has a lot of qualities that you are not seeing at the moment. Hopefully, in time, you will have a coffee with him and we will get back. That judgment was a very interesting example of what can happen in family courts. The court is taking a very detailed look, but what we would like to say is that plenty of cases should never have to go that far in court. Most family court cases do not go beyond child welfare hearings, and child welfare hearings, by and large, are inquisitorial rather than adversarial, although, obviously, they are conducted with lawyers on both sides. We feel that moving to an inquisitorial system for the Scottish courts is having quicker triaging because the child does not want to wait months and months before a decision is made about whether or not they can see the other parent. The longer the child has to not see the parent, the more likely it is that the child will think that there is something wrong that will not be more difficult for the child to get back in touch. Yes, the court needs to protect children as well. The court is not meant to be exposing children to risks. I do not think that the court tries not to, but we do need training and support for people like child welfare reporters, which are contained in the regulation plans that are coming through from the Children's Scotland Act. A lot is happening that is good, but we feel that now is the time to have a really radical look at how we handle family cases, which are quite different from most of the other cases that come up in court. They are about the welfare of children and we need to have a different approach to them. I feel slightly at a disadvantage for having taken the request for a short opening statement, perhaps overly literally. The rights within the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are interlinked, and they should not be seen as individual rights, but what needs to be considered is the way that they interact with each other. The right to maintain contact with both parents—all parents and with the extended family—has to be considered and, also in the light of the right for the child to be kept safe. The two need to be balanced. The other right that we have talked to a lot about but have not yet named is article 12, which is often expressed as the right to have a view and to have that view heard. It is actually more than that. It is right for that view to be given due weight, and that can be quite a considerable weight. It does not mean making children responsible for decision making, but it means making the adults who make decisions responsible for listening to the views of the child and giving them due weight. Article 12 is also a right to participate. One of the ways that private law has hung behind other parts of the justice system, particularly the ASN tribunal and the children's hearing system, is the way that those systems put the child at the centre and allow the children opportunities to actively participate in a way that is appropriate to them. There is a lot of good practice going on there to develop those settings' ability to allow children to participate. There is a lot of good things that were achieved by the 2020 act. It goes a long way, but it still has not really put in place a system that allows that. One of the issues that is still outstanding is children's lack of standing in a dispute between their parents. If a child and it may be an older child, but even if a child wants to actively participate, they often cannot. They also face barriers around them. We have heard it around adults facing those barriers. Children have that even more so. It is around finding a lawyer who will represent them or even advise them, and also obtaining legal aid because legal aid is still means-tested. Even if the child is trying to exercise their rights autonomously, that means legal aid is still means-tested on the basis of parental income. The children still do not have the opportunity to exercise their rights if they want to, not to suggest that it be compulsory for a child to be a party to a dispute about them, but they should have that opportunity. In terms of the cases that reached the court, one of the on-going themes through the 2020 act that we were talking about was recognising that a small minority of cases actually reached the court. A lot are dealt with amicably between parents or with the assistance of people like Relationship Scotland. The very small number that do reach the court, by definition, is a conflict. If there wasn't a conflict, no-one would be spending money taking things to court. In terms of children's involvement, it becomes more and more important to properly understand their views. Some of the examples that we hear around the way that children are talked about in courts suggest that, although views are being sought, they are not necessarily being given the weight that they need. Suggestions that children can be unduly influenced are really concerned that that suggests that it is a way of dismissing children's opinions when they are inconvenient. Finally, in terms of mediation, we have supported alternative dispute resolution and mediation. It is really important to reduce to an absolute minimum the number of cases that reach the court, but there is still varied practice in terms of how children are visible in that process as well and how children's views are there. That is a gap that we did not address. I think that Rosanna's organisation and other people involved in mediation are working on that, but there is still probably work to do in allowing children the right to participate in that process when decisions are made that are affecting their entire life. Just on that last point, we do within Relationships Scotland our family mediation process. We have our mediators do additional training to consult with children, so we have that established set-up process. Children can participate, have their views heard and those views are fed back to the parents in mediation to inform their decision making. It is very much still the parents decision, but the children have an opportunity to express their views. Thanks very much for that. I am interested in—maybe this is my lack of the knowledge of the complete landscape here—Meg New seems to be speaking a little bit about the challenge of infantilisation and not taking children as human beings of their own minds and using that as a pawn in some ways in some of these cases, maybe more so where there is actual conflict, as you say, the ones that go to court. I am wondering whether there is work that we need to be thinking about around—I do not think that everything can be solved with training, but there is something around training around what trauma means and training around what capabilities are. Capabilities will change within an individual, never mind a group of people as they grow up. I wonder if you could say a little bit more about those kinds of issues that we need to be able to get at. First of all, this is absolutely not something that is exclusive to civil justice or to any of these processes. It is an issue that is having across society where we still look at children in a way that, to use your word, infantilises them to an extent. We underestimate their capacity to express their views, to have sensible decision. When we discuss it, people start using worst-case examples. I think that I have probably done that myself in the past. If a three-year-old says that they want to be an astronaut, that is not possible. It is like, well, actually it might be, but that does not mean that that three-year-old cannot have sensible views about what is important to them or who is important to them or what they want to happen in their life. There is an article 12 about due weight, but sometimes that is used as an excuse to not talk about age and maturity. As an excuse to exclude, presumption should be. The presumption that we have in the 2020 act does work like this, and that is a massive improvement. The presumption should be that the child can express their views and have them taken into account. There is quite a high bar to say why they should not. It should be a rare thing. The due weight is useful when you have very small children who do not necessarily clearly express their views. It is also a way to draw on Judith's point not making the child responsible for the decision. When due weight means that what the child has said is not what is going to happen, that needs to go back to Ian's point, that needs to be communicated back to them in a sensitive way by the system, not necessarily by the sheriff or someone who can explain that to them. One of the discussions when the act was being considered was, or a parent. Actually, no, do not put parents in that role either. It is not that it needs to be done in a way that is sensitive to that child. I mentioned the presumption and I think that that has been one of the real positives. That is part of trying to generate the culture change. It is the sort of culture change that we are talking about in terms of incorporation of UNCRC as well. We heard previously that 12 became a magic cut-off because the presumption was from 12. You would have families in which each child progressively was—contact orders were ended when the child reached 12, but the younger siblings were still having to attend contact until they reached 12. That has been a real positive, but it is not just a justice thing. It is about how all of us as society consider children and their views and opinions. I think that we are well on that road now. We have started all that work, but it is not going to be instant. Sorry, the fact was a part of changing that. The written evidence provided that shared courts still do not seem to be equipped with Webex for the child welfare hearings and that parents are not being included in the Webex child welfare hearings. Are you confident that the children are being heard in child welfare hearings? With the coronavirus recovery bill, we would see remote hearings potentially extended until 2023. How do you think that that would impact the rights of parents and children to be heard in child welfare hearings? Can my question go to Ian? Thank you. We were surprised to hear recently that the Glasgow Sheriff's Court for Child Welfare hearings is not even managing to get Webex. They are just still doing them by phone. That is the biggest sheriff's court in Scotland. It has also got a very good team of family sheriffs. Obviously, it has been a massive change. It was actually good that the courts got Webex and then got telephone conferences in Webex up and running, but now that we have had them, we need to be moving faster back towards having people sitting down in courts so that the sheriff can see them, so that they can see each other, and so that they can see the sheriff. The sheriff's influence on parents who are not managing to agree needs to give them a push towards agreement in a sense. We would be really keen, and quite a few of the lawyers in this group would also be keen for family hearings to resume as soon as possible face-to-face in court. What you are also asking about is children. Despite the name, very few children, if any, appear in child welfare hearings. There is a degree of protection here that you do not want to be taking children into court, but you do need their views, and I think finding ways that children's views can be communicated. At the moment it can be through a form F9, it can be through the sheriff's speaking to the child, it can be through the child welfare reporter, it can be through intervention of a Relationship Scotland child consultation. There are so many different ways. Each court does it differently. In Germany, children have a right to speak to a judge, but only the judges who have done training in listening to children are allowed to handle that. We have some training like this in Scotland, but by no means every sheriff who talks to a child has gone through training. So there is a lot of change that can happen, and I think we use the learning from the Covid problems to move us forward along with all the law changes and the other things that have been implemented. I indicated at the outset that we certainly are of the view that telephone hearings are not an acceptable mode of hearing. People are excluded, including parties to the action, and it is not an open way of dealing with matters. There have been a lot of benefits from doing the virtual hearings and doing Webex hearings. Even in respect of speaking to children, I also do work as a child welfare reporter. Obviously, the core of your work would be seeing the child face to face, but the ability to have a Zoom communication with the child before you meet them face to face so that they know who they are meeting to enable them to communicate with you, I suppose more freely and more in a manner that they would be used to, is something that has opened up and I think can be used a bit more. Megan, you were wanting to come in as well. I agree with the concern about virtual hearings continuing. Particularly for issues around children and young people, it is really concerning that they are going to be continuing so long. I think that they do present a barrier not just to parents, obviously, but also to children and their participation. Likewise, I would be concerned if virtual consultations between child welfare reporters and children continued. That said, and this is a discussion that is happening around children's hearing service as well. In some cases, the use of virtual technology can be an enabling factor for children and young people. It can allow a different type of participation for them. It can be more comfortable for them, but when the decisions are made about that, that needs to be based on the child's best interests and the needs and their views on it, not on what is convenient for the system. I think that that is a concern that is that these technologies that we have all got so used to using become a default because it is easier rather than better. On the topic of training, I think that that is an on-going issue. It is interesting that in other countries compulsory training seems to be in place. It is around ensuring the consistency in knowledge and understanding and training of children's needs and their rights. We will be talking extensively tomorrow about the question of virtual trials and hearings. I really want to point out to the committee that the system is uncomfortable with virtual trials and hearings, but I am not clear that the evidence is there to say that it is not a better option than dealing with the existing delays that are absolutely growing like a virus in our system. Justice delayed as justice denied. We have multiple cases, and I suggest inviting assists to come and speak to the committee, which is a court advocacy service in Glasgow, about children. We know of one where a child is now involved in a case who, by the time that it comes to court, three years will have passed. You can imagine what an impact that has on a child waiting to come to court for three years. Also, there has been a pilot trial in Birmingham of virtual trials there for domestic abuse, and we know that the recommendation and has been accepted by the Lord President would be for virtual domestic abuse courts in every sheriff in Scotland, not just to address the backlog, but because there is so much evidence that evidence is better taken from witnesses and victims in the context where you are not putting a victim in the same room as her abuser. Civil proceedings are particularly egregious because victims are always in the same room with their abuser. Greens and other special measures are rarely allowed by sheriffs because they want the setting to be more informal. Children's views do not often want to be in those rooms, but that does not mean that they do not want to have a view and to have that view taken with its due weight. The question is, how do we make all kinds of hearings work for children rather than rushing back to in-person hearings based on the comfort of the adults in the system? I was just to respond to a couple of points there. My understanding, and I practice all across Scotland, is that webex for child welfare hearings is the norm, not teleconference hearings. The difficulty with the teleconference hearing is that you cannot see each other. From an advocacy point of view, you cannot see, for example, what papers the sheriff has. I had written an article about virtual advocacy, including the issues in telephone hearings. If you are faced with a telephone hearing, I would always ask the sheriff clerk to ensure that your client is given the telephone number so that they can also dial in because I think that Ruth was talking about the issue of parties being excluded. Across Scotland, the norm is webex rather than a telephone hearing. In terms of the children's views, sheriffs have this at the forefront of their minds in my experience, and you cannot lodge a written now without an F9 form. The F9 form is put in children's language and sent to the court with the application before the sheriff fully grant want to serve, and then the court is also going to consider how best to take the child's views. There was a case last year that was decided in Lord Malcolm in the inner house. It makes reference again to section 117b and article 12 in terms of the way to be placed on child's views and the requirements to take on child's views. As a result of that, that has been instructed to interview children as young as four, and regularly the court wants the child's views taken on even if there is a slight variation to a contact order. In my experience, the court is very well aware that child's views are required to be taken and consideration is given as to how best those views are taken. I want to pick up on a couple of things that have been mentioned and that Marcia has mentioned other stakeholders. As I was preparing to come here and was going through the agenda, it certainly occurred to me, first of all, that we also have the children's hearing system and the fairly recent legislation that opened up the possibility of anyone who is concerned about a child to make a referral to the children's reporter. Access is seemingly more direct, as opposed to being reliant on going through social worker education than being the gateway to that referral. It might be worth giving consideration to getting feedback from the Scottish Children's Reporters Administration, because they generally speak and will deal with the most vulnerable children and the most vulnerable parents. From that, we have already mentioned how children's views are taken. We have the F9 form, which was recently modified and the procedure was updated. A child can instruct a solicitor, and we have heard about the challenges that involve the availability of solicitors to act for children. Clan child law came to mind, as an organisation that might be a stakeholder to consult their Scotland's law centre for children and young people. Their input may be welcomed. A few of the other things that were occurring to me was that it is important to have a child-centred approach to that for family court cases. That is where the society, the law society and the sub-committee had been coming from. There are positives and negatives to the increased use of technology. The impact that a sheriff can have when a sheriff is speaking to the parties directly should not be underestimated. An experienced sheriff who deals with those types of cases on a daily basis, speaking to parties directly, losing that through the phone call type hearings where the parents have not been included. I appreciate now that solicitors should be aware that they can request that their clients are there, but there have been hearings when parents have not even heard what is going on. Highlighting the impact that a sheriff's comments can have to parents, let us be sensible about that. This is your child that we are talking about. It is quite important. The technological side of things that are, as I have said, positives and negatives. A child can feel, for instance, safer with a camera switched off and speaking to somebody. A remote hearing can be easier for a child or a parent practically and emotionally. A child might be able to give their views, for example, from a safe place, such as a school or a recorded statement. It is important to consider each case and the needs of the child. It certainly occurs to us that the court rules could be updated to require that to be considered at the case management hearings. Older children are obviously more engaging remotely. It has been mentioned already, but consideration should perhaps also be given to asking the child how they want their views to be taken. At the moment, we very much see the adults making that decision, the sheriff and the decision maker. Asking the child, those are the options, how would you feel? Roseanne, I am then going to Karen, and if the folk who have still got something to say can just come in after that. I just really wanted to say about the F9 form. Even though it has been redrafted in a child-friendly fashion, sending a child or a young person a form and expecting them to... I am almost speechless that we think that that is even an okay way to get a child's view, so I just have to say that. Thanks for keeping that quick as well, but we are tight on time in terms of the other areas that committee members want to cover, so if we could all try, it is a big topic, so I don't really understand that. Thank you to the panel. We know that coercive control and abuse often escalates and intensifies post-marriage separation, family separation. We now know that the pandemic has increased the ability of such control to take place. We have had parents and children share their lived experience of family members continuing to exercise abuse and coercive control upon children post separation through court processes and contact arrangements. Was coercive behaviour during periods of lockdown and the pandemic generally seen in the justice system? Is the system equipped and the people in it trained in regards to coercive control? Are the signs easily spotted or are they looked for? Also, was access to justice hindered because of that? I think that, compared to the system that I am often critical of, I am figuring out how to suddenly become sensitive to perpetrators' use of the courts in furthering their abuse, particularly as you pointed out in post-separation proceedings, in the middle of a pandemic, something that they didn't do very well when they weren't dealing with the pandemic is probably unrealistic. However, I will say that we heard and our sister agencies' victim support and assist also many cases in which the system was incapable, both the police and the civil processes in acting in a timely manner. We had one instance, for instance, when a perpetrator had the child for a visitation and then didn't bring the child back for over a month afterwards, claiming multiple Covid exposures. The system didn't have a tool with which to respond to the risk in that. Is the court able to identify coercive control and respond to it in civil courts? Our experience, to be honest, at the moment is not yet. We do know that all of the sheriffs and judges were trained in the new law. Thank you, Lord Carlaway, for making that mandatory. But anybody who knows anything about the effectiveness and the duration of effect of training knows that a one-off training is unlikely to create behaviour change or even attitude and understanding change without infrastructure and accountability, neither would we have at the moment. Women and children are telling us that there are pockets of excellence in the system, I have to just say, but in general their experiences of court are still as retraumatising and as frightening as they ever have been, and that many, many victims will never report again because of that. Okay, back to Karen, I think. Yeah, could I ask Judith the same question, please? Thank you so much. Your first question is around coercive control and abuse. Is it easily spotted? I think that there are always going to be challenges around these types of things. I do not think that any of us are particularly well educated over that, and I think that education and training from the judiciary to the practitioners to everybody involved in cases involving children should be very useful. It is a very nuanced area and it is such a complicated web that can be created and unpacking that for individual relationships can be quite complicated. The police, for instance, are they equipped to have these things flagged up? It is happening, it is there. I personally have clients who have symptoms of these types of relationships. I had personally said aside some time to do some training on narcissistic personality disorder, for instance, to inform my practice, but one of the things that I have come across in the work that I do with coaches and family therapists is that what they are saying is that it is often quite highly educated people. It is not the lower socioeconomic part of society that can be there absolutely, but it is prevalent across all socioeconomic aspects of society. It is not something that discriminates by wealth, so is it not therefore much more important to address? Thank you very much. I will leave it there, but I look forward to working on that further in the future. Thank you. There are a few other folk who are indicated to want to come on this topic. In terms of control and domestic abuse, Marsha has spoken very clearly on what the situation is with the coaches and the adults. I think that we are probably even further behind in recognising the impact on children and young people even when we were looking at the 2020 act. It was very much on an incident-based model. It was if the child is present, a child is in a situation of control, if there is a child in the house, because the whole point of that definition of curse of control is recognising the pervasiveness of domestic abuse. There is probably an even bigger hill to climb in terms of the awareness of the impact on children. I thank Roseanne for raising the issue on the F9 form on a long-standing basis. I am being clear about our concerns about its use as a way of gathering the views of children, particularly because, if there is one thing that could be influenced, it would probably be filling out a form that you did not understand in the first place and needed help from someone with. The measures that are in the 2020 act are intended to completely replace, rather than supplement it, should not be seen as a first step. I would very much hope that we were looking at it being phased out very quickly. I made reference to the F9 form because the court requires the F9 form to be made available before the action is lodged. Personally, as a child welfare reporter who regularly interviews children, I do not think that an F9 form is a way to get a child's views for the reasons that are already given, but that is what the court rules require. I think that the court should at the outset consider how the child's views should best be taken, but that is my personal view as a practitioner. I just wanted to say, in regard to coercive control, that the Family Law Association organised training. As part of our AGM conference this year, we had Nazine Martin speak about being a trauma-aware practitioner. It is something that is at the forefront of everybody's mind at the moment in terms of awareness to these kinds of issues. Both as a practitioner and also in terms of the other aspects of my role. You will often have clients who come into their office and when you ask them, for example, what do you want to happen? There is complete radio silence. As Judith said, this is something that you come across regularly and it is something to be aware of and how you can best represent a client and also as a child welfare reporter, be alert to those issues in terms of the best interests of the child. Because what we are talking about here at court proceedings is that the court is only interested in what is in the best interests of the child. That is their paramount consideration. The F9 form is a lot better than it used to be, but it is still totally inadequate to expect a child of various ages to understand. Cafcass, the children and family court advisory service in England and Wales have been doing a lot of work on this and they have young people's advisory boards working with them. They have been looking at ways in which children can send little video clips, children can do drawings, all sorts of things. We should view the F9 form as purely being a temporary process that could be vastly improved. Specialist sheriffs are another topic. We are talking about a very difficult job being undertaken by those sheriffs. In some Scottish courts, you have specialist family sheriffs doing a really good job. A lot of other sheriff courts in Scotland are just getting the same sheriff doing all the other processes. That is where I think there is an equality of opportunities. Why should, if you go to a court in Lerwick or Thurso or whatever, you do not get a family sheriff whereas you do in Edinburgh and Glasgow and cities? We could, and this is where the three hours that I was talking about at the start, coupled with the existing case management changes that are being gradually introduced, could mean that we get experienced family sheriffs dealing with the hardest cases in the court. You have talked about the access issues that are present. You have also talked about the insensitivity issues that are present and the backlog that we have experienced because of the pandemic. It would be quite good to get the views of Megan and Roseanne first about the family justice modernisation strategy that has been put in place. Does that go far enough in trying to challenge and tackle some of the issues that we have identified this morning? That is the next step or would be seen as the next step for us to progress some of that. If there are still gaps and fears that that will not achieve what you are expecting to achieve, there needs to be follow-up and some scrutiny and governance about how that process would go forward. I think that, to be fair to the civil servants in the Scottish Government, there has been a disruption across every part of the Scottish Government over the past two and a half years. Not just because of the pandemic, there have also been other things going on that have impacted on their workload. I think that the family justice modernisation strategy is a good starting point. There are going to be opportunities to discuss how things can be improved. It is positive that we are acknowledging that our family justice system needs to be modernised. The incorporation of the UNCRC and later of other UN human rights treaties will necessitate having a look again at the current proposals, but also the fact that times elapsed as a result of two years of or more of disruption to normal work. That is not just the Government official's normal work, it is all of our normal work in terms of the day-to-day job. It will mean that it probably does need a mini review, but I think that that is probably a really positive thing, because I think that lots of learning has happened in the past two years. I agree with Megan. We have heard quite a lot about the family justice modernisation strategy prior to Covid. Since then, there has been the Children's Scotland Act and the secondary legislation, and that seems to have been the focus of conversation. I am not actually sure—I think—a review of that and what needs to be amended in that would be worth doing at this point in time. People think that the Children's Scotland Act happened and it is in place, but there was a lot that still—I had a researcher contact me and say, oh, now that there are these ADR pilot meetings, how has that impacted on families? I said that there has been absolutely zero change because we are still talking about a pilot. A lot of what was in the act has not actually had an impact yet. These questions are being asked across the world. There are national judiciaries all over the world looking at exactly these things. The country of Singapore is more of a problem-solving approach to family cases. It is a similar sized country to Scotland—maybe not quite the same as Scotland, but its judges are doing that now. They are looking just in the way that we have done problem-solving in drug and alcohol courts so that it is not about working out who is right and who is wrong, but it is about working about what is going to be best for the children. The other thing that has happened internationally is that sometimes there have been trials, not trials in the court cases, but experiments with, let's see if we do it this way, Australia quite often has tried things out before they introduced them. I think that that is difficult to do within a court system, but it is possible to try things out. There is going to be the trial of the ADR, the alternative dispute resolution processes. We also lack a lot of data about the numbers of cases, the amount of time and the amount of cost in the Scottish courts. We need more data on that. I think that Marsha was wanting to come in. We have had lots of conversations both at the victim's task force and also in some of the Covid emergency work within the justice system about the delays to some of the modernisation agenda. There are a number of things that, if actually implemented with some feed, would make an enormous difference to the experiences of victims and children in the courts, including pre-recorded interviews, evidence by commission, a whole variety of things that we keep hearing are too expensive or too difficult to do, and yet we spend millions and millions of pounds on hearings that many of which never go forward, get postponed, etc. The other thing that I just wanted to pick up was Rosanna's comment early on about risk assessment in the decision making about awarding contact. We want to point to that as a fault in the system, which is then cascading down to all the problems, many of which we have been discussing today. We really believe that contact should never be ordered unless it is manifestly clear that the child and the non-offending parent are safe in that contact. The reason that we have contact centres is because those orders get made all the time when it is not manifestly clear that it is safe. I think that we should consider contact centres as a stop-gap rather than a short-term approach to safety, rather than as an answer to safety. Fulton MacGregor, please. Thank you, convener, and good morning to all the panel. Thank you very much for your evidence so far. I think that it has been a really interesting session. A lot of the areas that I was going to ask about have already had quite a good hearing. I think that that has just been down to the nature of the flexible nature of the way that the meeting has been convened and the way that people have asked questions. However, with that said, I still would like to ask some questions and some of the points that I know we have already spoke about. Children's participation, we have spoken about that a wee bit, but it is a really big issue for me when we took the bill through in the last Parliament. I wonder if any of the panellists who may be having had a chance to articulate other points on that could suggest to the committee ways in which we think that we could get children's voices to be more heard through the family war process. I know, convener, that you are asking members to ask a panellist to speak, but I am not sure if there is somebody that maybe would like to come back in on that issue who has not already had the opportunity. I have spoken about it, but I am not sure that I can add very much. I certainly agree with what other speakers have said about the use of the form F9. I did my dissertation on the form F9 in 1999, and it only changed last year, and it is still a form or not last year. It is recently. That definitely needs to be changed. We need to be looking at how do children want to participate in proceedings. Let's find out. Let's see what would be most appropriate for them. I think that the pandemic has moved things forward in terms of everybody's use of technology. How can that be harnessed in order to improve participation? One of the options that is available to the court is to appoint a curatrix to represent the child in court proceedings. That is not done normally, but it can be done if things are particularly complex, and it tends to be for an older child. I have cases on going just now where that works really well, because the curatrix is there simply to represent the child and to interview the child regularly, and then the child's views are conveyed through the curatrix, who is also representing the child's interests in the court proceedings, if that makes sense. That is another option that is available, and it can work really well other than the child being interviewed by an independent person, such as a child welfare reporter, and also a book about the F9 forum. I realise that I have already spoken on this issue, so thank you for letting me come back in. I think that there are some real opportunities in implementing the 2020 act. I am concerned to hear that courts are requiring the F9 forum, and I am hoping that that will not last very much longer. There is an opportunity for, as part of the family justice modernisation strategy, to not see this as a job done, but to continue to develop the way that we hear children's views and allow them to participate in proceedings. There is the flexibility in the act to allow different professionals to take on that role. I think that there was a lot of discussion about which professionals. I think that it is useful to have flexibility for whatever is appropriate for that particular child in terms of the profession of the reporter. I think that there is possibly even a larger discussion that could be had around what is the role of a child welfare reporter or a curator at Lightham and looking at some of the models that are used in other jurisdictions. Australia and New Zealand both have models around children's lawyers, and it varies from state to state in Australia, and there might be quite a lot of learning available there. The final thing is that it would be useful to have some more research on the views of very young children and some capacity building around how that is achieved. I think that it is something that is often seen as a problem because we do not properly understand how to do it. However, there is good practice out there in other areas, and I think that there is an opportunity to build the capacity. I do not think that it is reasonable to expect the professionals currently working in that area to necessarily have it because it is a relatively new concept to the law, but I think that there is lots of potential there. A couple of things. One is that I think that we should be making sure that we keep a really close eye on Bantu's work. I know that children experiencing domestic abuse are included in the list of constituencies for youth for being supported in the Bantu's model, and I think that there is going to be so much learning from that about how we can fix other elements of the system. The F9 form, I do not want to beat a dead horse here, but I will just say that there was an extensive work, and I think that Megan, the children's commission's office, and you probably were involved in this then, consulting young people about what they wanted and how they wanted to be consulted, and they said, do not use that form, ask us. That alternative was rejected at the time by the courts or the system. I think that one of the problems that we have in the system right now is that we do not have the infrastructure for children and young people to participate in development and design work, so we get to this stage where we are having discussions like this about why we do not know how children would like to do this, because we did not involve them early enough in the process. We have asked that the Department for Justice help to set up a standing children and young people's participation group, which we had prior to this, and we did with the Children's Commission, to feedback on justice matters, because we cannot just pull the thriving children out of our pockets and expect them to be in a place where they can engage with the system on any kind of an equal basis, and yet we have standing survivor groups for adults, and we have a survivor's reference group for adults. We really suggest that if the committee wants to be able to get on-going rates-based information from children and young people about the system and how they want to participate-that we need to fund that standing group. We have worked with other stakeholders to volunteer to help support that, but we cannot do it without some funding. Megan, on your point, mothers in mind is a project in Canada that works specifically with children under 4, and I am happy to connect you with some of that work. It is very interesting. The child advocacy programme, which was part of the 2020 act, there has been no evidence that it is moving at any fast pace or even a slow pace. The difficulty is that that is what children told us in Power Up, Power Down with the Children's Commission, was the single most important thing that they needed to interact with the system, which was an advocate that they trusted. It does not have to be a women's aid children's worker, although it could be, but the child advocacy system really needs to be higher up in the priorities for implementation, because we can pass those things on law, but unless they are actually made real in children's lives, then it is just sticking clusters. Although we have mentioned domestic abuse and coercive control a lot in this discussion, many of the cases that happen in the family courts either do not involve that at all. There is simply a dispute between parents or they involve allegations that may or may not be upheld, so I think that when you are considering this court involvement in sorting disputes between parents, domestic abuse is an important factor, and both men and women are committed to domestic abuse in some instances, but you cannot design the entire system on the basis of that. You have to think about what is best overall for all the cases going in the court. I had one for a long question, but I think that I could do this one then. Thank you so much. Just to feed into the conversation, I had a recent experience of the court sending out an F9 form for a child aged three. That was a training issue for that particular clerk. My understanding, having reviewed the legislation, is that the F9 is appropriately used for children of school age of five and over. That type of thing has happened. The F9 form is a general consensus. It is not a particularly good way of taking children's views. I think that it is important to take a balanced approach in making quick decisions. I am going to borrow a bit from education here to get it right for every child. An informed decision is more likely to be a better decision. I think that a balance ought to be there between making really quick decisions, which are obviously important to do for children, but obviously making a good decision for a child that is informed by the relationships around that child. I think that we have really clear feedback from children that they want to meet with a person, and getting a form through the post is not the way for them to be able to express their views. We have got really clear evidence of that. I think that what you are talking about there is that it needs to be more than just a short conversation as well. All of our mediators that meet with children will have at least two meetings with them, and it is about exploring their experience. It is not about answering a particular question that the court might have identified. I think that it is a bigger thing. It is specialist work. It needs to be done by people that know what they are doing. I did have a lot of questions on welfare reporters and contact centres, but I think that the issues have been extensively covered, convener, and in the interests of time, I am happy to leave it at that. There are a few other areas that we have not managed to cover, but we have gone round a lot of issues there in depth. There are quite a few things for the committee to look at how we might take forward. Thank you all so much for your evidence set today. We will now move, suspend briefly before moving into private session.