Conference on Children’s Voices in Family Separation
A conference took place on 12 June 2025 to promote Children’s Voices in Family Separation. The President of the Family Division introduced the conference by welcoming this new initiative for child-inclusive mediation. The President highlighted the importance of consulting with children in family cases, and just how powerful this can be in focussing parental minds on their child.
The Family Solutions Group actively promotes ‘Children’s Voices in Family Separation’
Article 12 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children:
- Any child capable of forming their own views should have the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting them.
- The child’s views should be given due weight accordance to their age and maturity.
Family Procedure Rules Practice Direction 12B 4.4
- Children should be involved, to the extent which is appropriate given their age and level of understanding, in making the arrangements which affect them.
- Specifically, this applies in the context of dispute resolution away from the court.
Practical Tools
In the majority of families who separate, children are unable to exercise the rights given them by the UNCRC and upheld by the FPR.
Where parents are in active court proceedings about their child, the child will most likely be consulted by CAFCASS. However, most families who turn to family lawyers are not in active child proceedings. Their children also have the right to be consulted but under current structures, hardly any are given that opportunity.
The FSG has worked with senior judiciary, leading family law practitioners and family mediators to plug this gap.
Children’s Voices in Family Separation offers family law practitioners a practical tool to enable their clients’ children to be consulted, as is their right, and their views fed back to the parents.
This works by enlisting a child-inclusive mediator to be engaged alongside the solicitor-led process.
This is not the provision of evidence for use at court. Quite the opposite.
Child Inclusive Mediation is a fully confidential process. It gives young people a voice, and it gives parents (and those advising them) a more informed understanding of their child’s experience and what matters to them when decisions are being made. It is governed by the professional standards set by the Family Mediation Standards Board and upheld by the Family Mediation Council.
Download Resources
Documents available as part of this ‘Children’s Voices in Family Separation’ initiative are the following:
- Child Inclusive Mediation Protocol for Solicitors
- Child Inclusive Mediation – Frequently Asked Questions
- Child Inclusive Mediation during Solicitor Negotiations – Parent Consent form
- Practical Tips for Encouraging Parents to take up Child Inclusive Mediation
One father writes
Getting independent, objective insight into what Darcy was thinking and how she was feeling was invaluable.
Throughout the legal case, I felt as though I was hearing a lot about what other people wanted or thought was right or best, including the voice in my own head. To feel confident that we were hearing Darcy’s voice, the things she didn’t or couldn’t say to battling parents, was not just reassuring but actually quite moving.
She was, and remains, the only thing that matters for me and hearing her feedback resulted in an immediate stop to all legal action, despite my ongoing reservations.
