Looking back on Pro Bono Week 2024 and our Cases of Conflict Student Panel Event
How Dads House Family Law Clinic helps
We focus all year, not just during pro bono week, on providing holistic pro bono advice through our Wednesday and Friday afternoon family law clinics. We provide advice on child arrangements, mediation advice, and emotional support to dads and mums in our small charity shop front office in Fulham, London. In an average year, Dads House Family Law Clinic provides pro bono advice to the sum of £1,375,962.75.
Our law clinic is led by our Legal Director, Simon Bruce, a solicitor with over 40 years of experience as a family solicitor and Partner at Dawson Cornwell. If you knew Dads House Family Law Clinic before this article, you would know Simon, who, in his own words, is ‘fanatic’ about Liverpool Football Club! I can’t reasonably claim the same status, but Simon and I do share the same home colours, whether it is Liverpool red or Middle Temple red.
My Pro Bono Week 2024
To set the scene, on Wednesday 6 November 2024, it felt like Autumn was on the turn to winter, but most importantly, it was Pro Bono Week, which champions access to justice.
My morning started by heading to the Central Family Court early for, unusually, an all-day financial remedy enforcement final hearing, where Matthew Richardson of Coram Chambers represented one of our mum’s pro bono.
The all-day hearing with our clients being represented pro bono by Coram Chambers was not unusual. What was unusual was the financial remedies case, as we mainly focus on child arrangements. However, in this case, we acted pro bono in both the financial remedies and child arrangements cases, providing around £67,566.00 worth of pro bono advice and representation. We are indebted to Simon Miller (Harcourt Chambers, Family Law Awards Junior Barrister of the Year 2024) and Matthew Richardson for their robust, practical and expert advocacy in both cases. Our client that day was also supported at court by our emotional support coach Jo, and Dads House law student Anna Hardy.
When the hearing broke for lunch, I tracked back west across London for 13:30 to launch our first ‘Coram Chambers Pro Bono Week Takeover of Dads House Family Law Clinic’ of 2024. This was the second successful year that Coram Chambers and Dads House Family Law Clinic ran this Pro Bono week programme. This year, we were privileged as John Paul Cregan and Sarah Branson of Coram Chambers were advising three dads on Wednesday afternoon.
After helping those dads, as the clock struck 17:00 I went back to central London and Middle Temple for our student panel event.
Our Middle Temple Pro Bono Week 2024 Panel Event – Cases of Conflict: Do shared lives with orders and the court approved parenting app help parents experience justice in the family court
Our expert panel
Sitting on our expert panel were Her Honour Judge Sapnara, Simon Bruce, Sophie Hill, a highly respected Junior Barrister at Coram Chambers, and James Evans, Head of UK Professional Education at OurFamilyWizard. I was lucky enough to chair the event.
Why was this panel important?
This panel was vital as it discussed the enduring problem of how to reduce conflict between parents in private child cases. It has been a long-running issue for the judiciary. This is shown by the fact that Sir Andrew McFarlane, the President of the Family Division, said in 2019 in his Keynote Address to the Resolution Conference, ‘to my mind, there has got to be a better way of assisting those couples who need some help and support at what is plainly a difficult time for them and for their children.’
However, in his letters to parties first sent out in 2024, the first letter of its kind from a member of the judiciary, the President asked parents to:
‘Please think about these things first:
- As parents, you share responsibility for your child and have a duty to talk to each other and to make every effort to agree about how you will bring them up
- Even when you separate, this duty continues
- The law expects you to do what is best for your child, even when you may find that difficult
- The law requires a court to presume that the involvement of a parent in a child’s life will further the child’s welfare unless the contrary is shown and, unless it is unsafe to do so, a child will normally need to have a loving, open relationship with both parents’
Who was this panel event for?
This panel was for Middle Temple students and Dads House law students who we hope are the next generation of family lawyers.
The event was sold out, one of Middle Temple’s most successful lectures of the season.
What we discussed
Shared Care Order
To this end, we discussed the development of shared care orders in AZ v BX [2024] EWHC 1528 (Fam):
Assuming that the parties to a child arrangements order application are the mother and father of the child, I take a shared lives with order to be one where the court orders that the child shall live with the mother and shall live with the father and then divides the children’s time between living with each, whether that is equal time or otherwise.
The harmful impact of conflict
According to Cafcass website definition:
Harmful conflict is distinct from domestic abuse. We define harmful conflict as conflict between parents or those adults important to the child that is detrimental to their welfare. Unlike domestic abuse, destructive conflict is the responsibility of both parents. As with all forms of harm to children, conflict can vary in nature and intensity, as well as the short-term and long-term impact on their emotional and mental wellbeing.
We find the following parental attitudes or behaviours are indicative of harmful conflict between parents or adults that are important to a child:
- a high degree of mistrust
- difficulty in managing thoughts and feelings of hurt and anger
- the sense of a threat that things will get out of control
- ongoing difficulties in communication and co-operating positively in the interests of the child
- loss of focus on the child
- prolonged and repeated court proceedings
Some of these behaviours can constitute domestic abuse and, depending on how they are expressed and conveyed to the child, ‘alienating behaviours’.
Cultural aspects of cases
HHJ Sapnara, with her expertise, discussed the powerful impact domestic abuse and conflict can have on cases which involve BAME families, a parent’s consequential ability to engage in proceedings, Article 6 rights and how important it is to have a Bench that understands subtle cultural issues rather than simply seeing a disengaged parent.
Communication
As OurFamilyWizard’s James Evans was on the panel, we discussed the powerful effect that OurFamilyWizard has on separated parents, how their GDPR systems protect parents’ and children’s data and how their tone meter helps reduce conflict, for instance, by gently asking parents if they want to send messages that are rude, aggressive or abusive.
Volunteering
Finally, we discussed how volunteering helps provide students with a strong foundation for their careers. This allows them to understand the many forces at play now in family law, which not only focuses on the legal work, but also helps to reduce conflict in society and uses technology that supports parents and the courts.
Looking forward and what we hope for
The true power of putting on educational events like these is not only the chance to learn from the experts on the panel (the hour-long Q&A sessions were one of the longest I have ever seen!), it is the lasting personal impacts of the event from several members of the audience receiving volunteering opportunities after the event, not just with Dads House Family Law Clinic but OurFamilyWizard as well.
Also, Dads House met our new Friday clinic adviser at the event, a barrister called Alan Bates.
However, what I hope for on a far larger scale is that the majority of the 30+ students who were in that room understood the power and complexities of family law, and how in the President’s own words, family lawyers and everyone in the family law industry has ‘the task of identifying, developing…[a] better way to achieve good enough co-parenting between separated parents is a matter for society in general, policy makers, Government and, ultimately Parliament; it is not for the judges. ’As the President of the Family division concluded in 2019, ‘his purpose… [was], therefore, simply to call out what is going on in society’s name, and at the State’s expense, and invite others to take up that call.’
We hope we helped and highlighted for the next generation of family lawyers the guiding principles when it comes to cases of conflict.
Four Generations of Middle Temple Female
Her Honour Judge Sapnara – Senior Circuit Judge
Khatun Sapnara was appointed as a Circuit Judge in March 2014. She sits in family (East London Family Court) and crime (Kingston Crown Court) and was elected a Bencher in 2015.
Sophie Hill – Barrister at Coram Chambers
Sophie Hill is a leading junior in family law with a particular emphasis on financial matters, specialising in high net worth and international cases, nuptial agreements and disclosure issues, instructed by the best specialist family law teams in London. As of July, she has been Dad’s House Honorary Counsel.
Ceri Parker Carruthers – Dads House Family Law Clinic Manager
Ceri Parker Carruthers is an aspiring barrister and was Called to the Bar in 2019. Ceri is Dads House Family Law Clinic’s Manager, where she specialises in private child law and manages the clinic. She has been in that role since 2023.
Anna Hardy – Dads House Family Law Clinic Law Student
Anna Hardy is a future Pupil Barrister at 1 King’s Bench Walk, commencing 2026. She is a weekly volunteer at Dads House Family Law Clinic, completing attendance notes for clients and supporting them at hearings. Anna just completed the BVS course at City, the University of London, and was assisted by Middle Temple through the Astbury Scholarship 2024.
Ceri Parker Carruthers is an aspiring barrister and was Called to the Bar in 2019. Ceri is Dads House Family Law Clinic’s Manager, where she specialises in private child law and manages the clinic. She has been in that role since 2023.
