Children and young people have the right to be involved in decisions about their lives. Yet decades of research show that, in the family courts, too many children remain confused about what is happening and feel unseen and unheard by those making decisions about them.
The family courts – a system built without the child in mind?
One of the challenges in practice is how to support children and young people to take participate in a legal system not designed with them in mind. The structure of family court proceedings comes from an era when the value of children having a voice was less evidenced and less understood.
Although Section One of the Children Act requires children’s wishes and feelings to be considered, Nuffield FJO research suggests levels of participation within private law proceedings have been concerningly low. Before the roll out of Child Focused Courts, only around half of children participated in proceedings, and even among secondary school aged children, the figure was still less than 60%.
In public law the tandem representation models provide a framework for universal inclusion, but research with children and young people still suggests that they often feel unseen and unheard. As one young person described in a Nuffield FJO study from 2023, 'Like you are just like a case, and you are one of a thousand. You’re a number on a piece of paper and your feelings aren’t really taken into account.'
For many years, professionals, children and families have warned that our structures mean children and young people’s input comes infrequently and too late.
Why participation matters
The Children Act is clear that the court needs to consider children’s wishes and feelings when making welfare-based decisions. But participation is important for a range of reasons beyond decision makers having the evidence they need.
Involving children can improve their experience during what can be a distressing and disempowering time in their lives. Research suggests that children who have positive experiences of participation are more likely to be positive about the outcome of proceedings, even when the court goes on to make an order that is not the one they would have chosen. Participation isn’t just important because it helps the court make good welfare-based decisions, it can play its own discrete role in supporting the child’s well-being.
Getting participation right
For children to receive the benefits of participation, we need to think about how to make the experience positive and meaningful. Three elements contribute to effective participation - information, options and feedback.
Having the information to understand the process you are taking part in is crucial. Children involved in both public and private law proceedings in England and Wales often describe feeling confused about what is going on. Sometimes what they imagine is worse than reality. So, we need to think about how we ensure children can ask questions and have access to accurate, child centred information. This includes using resources like the films created by the family justice young people’s board to explain what happens in court.
Giving children options is also important. Children will differ by virtue of their age, stage of development, circumstances and personality. We need a system that can offer different approaches that reflect this so that children can engage in ways that work for them. This can start off with simple adjustments such as choice over where they meet a social worker or family court advisor, whether that meeting is online or in person and whether siblings are present.
Giving options also means reflecting on the full range of ways children can participation. For example, children writing to judges, being separately represented, giving evidence or visiting the court room. For some young people, direct interaction with the decision maker can be particularly important. A recent pilot focused on judges meeting young people in care proceedings suggested that this could help reduce anxiety and increase trust in the process. The pilot also found examples of situations where the court had addressed issues that were important to the child, which otherwise might have been overlooked – such as seeing a pet or having musical instrument returned to them following a placement move. While meeting with judges will not be right for all children, this is a good example of how children having a voice can take different forms.
Finally, feedback. Many children describe feeling left in the dark about decisions made about them. Historically we haven’t focused on ensuring that children are told the outcome when the court is making decisions. We are now seeing significant innovation in this space. The Child Focused Court final order template includes provision for the court to record who is going to inform the child of the outcome. Cafcass and Cafcass Cymru have published guides to support parents and carers in discussing what has been decided. In March 2025 the former president of the Family Division published his Toolkit for Judges on writing to Children.
While different situations will call for different approaches, it is encouraging that we are beginning to acknowledge that feedback is the final part of the participation journey and instrumental in making sure children feel heard and understand what happened.
By focusing on information, options and feedback we begin to reorientate the system towards the positive participation that children tell us makes such a big difference to their experiences.
Jude Eyre is associate director at Nuffield Family Justice Observatory
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