Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the suggestion from the expert panel in the report entitled Assessing Risk of Harm to Children and Parents in Private Law Children Cases, published in June 2020, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of providing training on a multi-disciplinary basis across all professions and agencies within the family justice system to ensure a consistent approach; and if he will take steps to (a) resource and (b) coordinate such training.

Since the Assessing Risk of Harm to Children and Parents in Private Law Children Cases report was published in June 2020, good progress has been made on delivering the commitments taken forward in the Government’s Implementation Plan, with the majority of these completed or well under way.

We have designed and are piloting a more investigative – and less adversarial - approach for private law proceedings in Dorset and North Wales, in particular for survivors of domestic abuse. At the heart of this model is closer multiagency working which has led to improved communication, greater consistency in information and multi-disciplinary training. The pilot courts work closely with the specialist domestic abuse sector including Independent Domestic Abuse Advisers to ensure that adequate domestic abuse risk assessments and support is in place. Alongside this, the Judicial College has launched new domestic abuse digital training packages for the judiciary and has rolled out a programme of compulsory domestic abuse training for family and civil judges. Monitoring and evaluation of the pilots is ongoing and will inform any decision on rolling out the process further, we anticipate this will be concluded in early 2024.

In April 2023, Family Procedure Rule Committee amended the Family Procedure Rules and Practice Directions to allow Independent Domestic Violence Advisers and Independent Sexual Violence Advisers to accompany parties in the courtroom.

My Department will shortly publish a full update on all Harm Panel commitments.