FDAC is facility that should be “taken seriously” in Government campaign focussing on violence against women and girls: President of the Family Division

Appearing before the Justice Committee earlier this week (28 October), Sir Andrew also confirmed his upcoming retirement as the President of the Family Division – noting there will need to be a Judicial Appointments Commission competition to find his successor.

Answering questions on the topic of the Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC), the Family President hailed the initiative, noting its “high success rate of supporting individuals to become dry and clean”.

FDAC is an alternative family court for care proceedings, specifically designed to work with parents who struggle with drug and alcohol misuse.

Sir Andrew said to the Committee: “All the research of FDAC shows that for every pound spent, it reaps two or three pounds benefit.

“[…] The reason that I'm passionate [about FDAC] is that, although it says on the tin “drugs and alcohol”, I understand that [in] every case, or nearly every case, an underlying feature is domestic abuse.”

He continued: “These individuals are serially victims of sustained domestic abuse, and turning to drugs and alcohol is a coping mechanism. And the professionals working in FDAC say we often have to address the domestic abuse first before we can allow the individual to have confidence to move on. […] If that's right, if it's a facility that will address domestic abuse, then all the more reason for it to be taken seriously in the campaign that government rightly has on focusing on violence against women and girls.”

The Family President warned however that FDAC remains a “postcode lottery”, as it depends upon the local authority in each postcode to be able to fund it.

He said: “FDAC has a high success rate. The problem is - who pays for the psychiatrists, psychologists, specialists, and social workers? […] Probably the local authority. That's the normal source. Police commissioners pay in some areas. Some charities pay in some areas. But it's haphazard, the funding, and it's not cheap.”

Sir Andrew also talked to the committee about ongoing delays in the disposal of public law children cases.

In November 2022, he warned that delay had "become normalised” in such proceedings, and that there needed to be a “radical change of culture within the family court”. He also reiterated the need for practitioners to “reconnect with the core principles of the Public Law Outline”, to ensure that the statutory requirement of completing each case within 26 weeks was met once again.

In October this year, the Family Presiding Judge for London warned that whilst work is leading to improvement, London remains an “outlier” in terms of the time it takes to determine care proceedings and the number of hearings it takes to do so, with “too many” incidences of non-compliance with the PLO.

Discussing this topic, Sir Andrew said: “I think in London, a culture had developed of allowing cases to drift. […] In November last year, we launched a bespoke strategy for London, to deliver the rather unpalatable message to the professionals there, saying, what you're doing is out of kilter with the way things are done elsewhere.

“And the figures for London are beginning to move in the right direction. But it's regrettable that it was only during the course of last year that that penny dropped, that [for] London it was partly a behavioural thing, a cultural thing, rather than simply the volume of work.”

Answering questions on the role of AI in the future of the Family Court, Sir Andrew confirmed his recent appointment of a national lead judge for AI.

He told the committee: “I've appointed a judge to be in charge of AI, not because I want, by next Thursday, the family court to be doing everything on AI. What I was conscious of was the fact that this was all developing, and we needed to be informed about it and understand what it can do for us, and what to be aware of.”

Meanwhile, he noted his wish for transcripts of court hearings and particular judgments “being available much more than they are”.

He said: “Getting a transcript, it's [an] expensive thing, and judges have to read them and authorise them. I'm sure AI can be very useful in producing, far more efficiently, a transcript, for example, and AI should be available to more efficiently anonymise a judgment so it can be quickly put out.

“But we need to be wary, there's already been cases where AI has been used by lawyers to produce documents which have inadvertently produced 'hallucinations' - non existent decisions - so it's something we need to be fully aware of”.

Finally, reflecting on his tenure as Family President, Sir Andrew highlighted the improvements in transparency in the Family Court.

He said: “We've opened up the court and it's now part of business as usual that journalists can come in and can report what goes on without naming anybody. But being transparent is much more than simply letting a journalist in, it’s an attitude of mind - being open.”

The Family President added: “I think we were called the secret family justice system, or the secret family court, and I don't think that can be applied to us now.”

Lottie Winson