Kate Molan reviews helpful new guidance to protect the anonymity of children in the family courts
- Agenda exploring transparency in the family court continues.
- Judgment dealing with applications for reporting restriction orders coincides with draft guidance on the anonymisation of judgments.
The welfare of children has always been at the forefront of the family justice system. In May 2015 Lucy Cummin and I wrote an article in this journal, “Keep it in the family” which was subsequently republished by LexisNexis for circulation at the Resolution conference (see 165 NLJ 7644, p 13).
The article detailed how the President of the Family Division, Sir James Munby, had issued a consultation paper aimed at understanding whether there was a need for the family courts to become more transparent as a way of instilling greater public confidence in the family justice system. The consultation dealt with four main issues, namely the publication of judgments, court listing descriptions, disclosure of confidential documents and hearings in public.
At the time of our article, the Association of Lawyers for Children (ALC), Resolution, and Penningtons Manches had all provided publicly available
