How is the law serving single parents & their children? David Burrows considers a half-century of reforms
- The 1974 Finer report of the Committee on One-Parent Families aimed to improve the lives of single parents and their children.
- This article considers the report’s recommendations and the legislative reforms that have taken place since—in particular, the court’s powers to order parties to engage in mediation.
It is June as I write; and finally, after 50 years and more, mediation is ‘busting out all over’, including in the Court of Appeal and in the Family Division. How did we get here? Why has it taken so long since the first Finer report thoughts of ‘conciliation’ in 1974 and the first conciliation service in Bristol in the late 1970s? And what of those 50 years since 1974?
On 2 July 1974, the report of the Committee on One-Parent Families, July 1974, Cmnd 5629, chaired by Sir Morris Finer, was published. Its recommendations were designed to alter for the better the lives of single parents (then proportionally many more women than men) and
