As part of a series of family justice system reforms, new combined Family Courts have come into being in England and Wales.
The new courts, along with other alterations including new time frames in cases in which children are taken into care, have been described as being “a hugely important change” to a “very dysfunctional system” by Justice Minister, Simon Hughes.
The justice reforms will apply to the 270,000 new family cases which arise in the UK each year and relate to issues such as divorce, domestic violence, local authority intervention and adoption.
Research carried out in 2011 found that children involved in such cases were being put at risk of further suffering due to excessive delays, with some supervision and care-related cases taking an average of 56 weeks to resolve.
As a result of this, the reforms aim to address a host of issues and aim to ensure that care cases are completed where possible within six months within a single Family Court. The single court replaces the current three-tier court system in such cases.
The reforms will also require separating couples to attend a mediation awareness session prior to taking disputes over children or finances to court. There will also be moves to ensure that the right level of judge is appointed for a specific Family Court case, and that the hearing is held in the most suitable location.
President of the Family Division, Sir James Munby, told the BBC: “Today marks the largest reform of the family justice system any of us have seen or will see in our professional lifetimes.
“Taken as a whole, these reforms amount to a revolution. There has been, indeed there had to be, a fundamental change in the cultures of the family courts. This is truly a cultural revolution.”