The Government's Family Resolution Pilot Project was "a mixed success",concludes an independent evaluation. The project, which was announced ina green paper on family separation, was designed to be an alternative tocourt battles over contact with children.
Yet it has attracted criticism over its content and because so fewcouples took part. The Government said 1,000 couples would be eligiblefor the year-long pilots, which took place in three areas. But only 62cases were referred and just half completed the programme. Nearly athird dropped out before the first session.
"Referrals and completions were clearly disappointing," reports theevaluation by researchers from the University of East Anglia. Theevaluation says "difficulties in multi-agency working" and "a lack ofeffective local management" contributed to this failure. It was hopedthe project would provide a blueprint for alternative dispute resolutionbut this did not happen, the researchers concluded.
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