Family Law in Partnership (FLiP) has joined forces with FLANC to help neurodivergent individuals who need family law advice.
The teams at FLiP and FLANC have combined their expertise to develop best practice and a practical toolkit to help legal practitioners support neurodivergent individuals through Non-Court Dispute Resolution processes (NCDR).
It is estimated that around one in five people are neurodiverse, both in the UK and the rest of the world.
Neurodivergent people often face barriers when accessing essential support as service providers do not understand or meet their needs. Barriers will be unique to each individual and in a family separation or divorce, it may be that both adults and children are facing barriers. An added consideration for legal practitioners is that family members may or may not be clear about their own neurodiversity.
The NCDR toolkit is intended to help mediators, family solicitors, barristers and arbitrators who want to provide the best support to neurodiverse clients and help them to access negotiation, mediation, arbitration and collaborative practice. It includes guidance on screening clients and tools that can be used to better understand individual need. Elizabeth Fletcher, a Director of FLiP who is also a Mediator and Collaborative Practitioner, explained:
“In my experience NCDR processes are usually more effective for neurodiverse individuals as there is a level of flexibility that means the process can be tailored to individual needs. I hope the toolkit will support NCDR practitioners in making adjustments to processes, so that more of the neurodiverse community are able to experience the benefits of an NCDR process in family separation and divorce.”
Jenny Beck KC (Hon), a founding Director of FLANC added:
“We founded FLANC to promote equal access to justice for the neurodivergent community by addressing barriers to participation in family proceedings. The toolkit, along with other useful resources such as the ‘All About Me document’ do exactly this.”
The NCDR toolkit, including the All About Me document, can be accessed here: www.flanctoolkit.org
