Parental involvement and Children and Families Act 2014

Suesspiciousminds comments on the Family Justice Review of the Children and Families Act 2014 who were asked to consider parental involvement in relation to the welfare of the child. Should a non-resident parent have equal access to the child, for example?

There were four options consulted on (none of them being the presumption of equal time or shared time that the media reported on, and that the fathers’ rights lobby were asking for. I’ve tried in this article to not split it on pure gender lines – I think that all parents who don’t live with their children would like the Court to have in mind that spending a lot of time with both parents is better for a child than artificially restricting one parent’s time with their child)...

The Government decided that the court should work on the presumption that a child`s welfare is likely to be furthered through safe involvement with both parents but the nature of that `involvement` has been watered down over time.

...there`s a presumption that it is good for a child to have involvement with both parents (unless it would cause harm or risk of harm to the child), but that involvement can be `of some kind, direct or indirect, but not any particular division of a child`s time`.

It is probably worse for non-resident parents than the current Act, which tended to be interpreted that direct contact for both parents is a good thing for the child, if it can be done safetly.

http://suesspiciousminds.com/2014/04/28/welfare-of-the-child-parental-involvement/