The news that three family resolution pilot schemes will run for a year in inner London, Brighton and Sunderland hasn't exactly been welcomed with open arms by parenting pressure groups, which say the measures are "meaningless" (Fathers 4 Justice) and "half baked" (Equal Parenting Council).
Their issue lies in the fact that the scheme, which aims to divert families from lengthy court cases by helping them work out parenting solutions, will not be mandatory.
The scheme will give parents who come to court the chance to attend counselling sessions. A first group session will give them information about issues around separation, including the potential psychological impact on the child. In a second session, they will be taught resolution, negotiation and anger management skills, with the aim that the parents and an adviser from the Child and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) will then draw up a parenting plan without recourse to the court.
But confusion over whether this will be non-mandatory mediation or compulsory intervention is now rife.
Tony Coe, president of the Equal Parenting Council, says a non-mandatory pilot scheme is a "teeny tiny step" in favour of mediation. "It needs to have the authority of the court behind it. Without that, I don't think it will be effective at all."
Coe is speaking from Florida, where he says a better, enforceable system based on mediation is in place. "The arguments put forward for this are pretty irresistible, but sadly all the Government has done is just take bits of the Florida system - it's half baked," he adds.
Cafcass external projects manager Brian Kirby helped devise the pilot, which has been developed over the last year with input from a number or groups, including the judiciary, child psychologists and mediation bodies.
He says the scheme will be non-compulsory and mediation based - and is confident the pilots can work well.
"In Florida, it is mandatory under the law - if you don't turn up to mediation sessions you're fined. But it can't be mandatory here without changes to the law. The other argument is that mediation is about parents resolving things for themselves. If you force something on people, it's not very different from a court order," he says.
He points out that judges will be proactive in recommending parents go through the programme. He also says pressure will be put on parents to reach an agreement during the sessions, but admits that he doesn't know how many people will reach agreements without going through the court system.
"We know already through the work we do that we can help people reach agreements up to 60 or 70 per cent of the time, but we don't know how satisfactory they are and how long they last," he says.
His arguments may not cut much ice with fathers' groups. A Fathers 4 Justice spokesman calls the pilots a "congestion charge" on parents to stop them clogging up the courts. "You can't facilitate mediation - it has to be mandatory," he says. The group has this week set out its vision in a report that proposes a triangular model of mediation, incentive (that is mandatory enforcement) and a legal presumption of shared parenting.
Its wish may not be far off. In a meeting last week, family justice minister Lord Filkin appeared to back away from the idea of a non-mandatory mediation scheme. Solicitors Family Law Association chair Kim Beatson, who attended the meeting, says the impression given was that the Government had not decided whether the scheme will be non-mandatory or compulsory.
"As I see it, it would be more useful to describe the scheme as intervention appointments that should be mandatory, and then an officer can decide what a couple needs - it could be a fast-track referral to courts, a parenting order and so on. The Government seemed to feel it was unfortunate that the impression had been given that this would be mediation," she says.
But even so, Gill Loughran, the chief executive of parenting support charity Parentline Plus, backs Kirby's view that the process must be a "softly softly" one.
The group runs an ongoing campaign, Contact Counts, to make parents aware of the benefits of contact, and Loughran says there is a lot of evidence that the counselling model proposed in the pilots works.
In addition to the pilots, the Government also announced that the system would be shored up by a 3.5m investment in child contact centres, with 14 more centres to be built in areas that previously had none. But it remains to be seen whether the measures - be they compulsory or optional - will be enough to placate interested parties.
WHAT'S NEXT?
- Three family resolution pilot schemes will begin running in September for one year
- Additional 3.5m to fund 14 new supervised child contact centres
- Family justice minister Lord Filkin to continue to consult with a range of groups on proposals outlined in Making Contact Work, published last week.
