Analysis from the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory exploring future needs of the family justice system suggests there will be an increase in international origins and ties, a more ethnically diverse range of families, more parents with disabilities and an increase in pressure on mental health services.
The complexity of the changing needs of the population may lead to safeguarding and proceedings taking longer, requiring more problem-solving approaches to deal with multi-layered vulnerability, the organisation’s report suggests.
Tomorrow’s parents: Understanding the family justice system of the future analyses demographic trends in England and Wales to identify the potential implications on the parents of tomorrow. The data explores the changing needs of young people aged 16-24, and how their characteristics and vulnerabilities could impact the family justice system.
A decline in teenage pregnancy and the increasing age of parenthood may have “a tangible impact” on the family justice system, the report suggests. By 2023, the average age of mothers was 30.9. With the number of working mothers also increasing, an older retirement age and a housing crisis, the result could be an impact on the availability of kinship care and support.
The housing crisis could also impact private family proceedings, with the report’s authors – Dr Caitlin Shaughnessy and Molly Corlett – questioning “the appropriateness of making arrangements for a child to visit, live or stay with a parent who may not have appropriate accommodation – such as in shared multi-occupancy housing”.
They add: “We don’t know what the psychological impact of a childhood spent in temporary accommodation is, or how this might affect a young adult as they start a family themselves.
“These concerns may become a more prominent feature of public and private law cases as the housing shortage intensifies and as cost of living difficulties persist.”
Cultural background and the ethnicity of families are also changing, with families increasingly likely to have international origins and ties. Over the past 15 years, the proportion of children with parents not born in the UK has increased significantly, with four in 10 babies born in 2024 having at least one parent born outside of the UK. For over a quarter (27%) of babies, both parents were born outside of the UK.
“What might families’ increasingly international lives mean for the family courts?” Shaughnessy and Corlett ask. “Could it lead to a higher number of potential kinship carers who live abroad, relocation disputes after parents separate, or cases where immigration and family law intersect?”
The percentage of young people reporting a disability has also risen over the last decade, which the authors suggest will lead to an increase in parents with disabilities in both private and public law proceedings that will require reasonable adjustments to ensure equitable access. A growing prevalence of mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression and the pressures on mental health services could result in an increase in longstanding and potentially untreated mental health concerns, the authors warn. The family justice system may need to consider how parents with histories of trauma might experience court proceedings, they suggest.
“In light of these challenges, it is more important than ever to support a family justice system that treats families fairly and equitably, accommodating needs and experiences so that people can truly access justice within the system,” Lisa Harker, director of Nuffield Family Justice Observatory concluded.
One Response
The implications of the family justice system for immigrant families is much more complex. In Asian families children have a closer connection to grans parents particularly grand mothers. Also women have a closer link to mothers and since Asian women provide support to daughters during child birth, the children also develop close connection with maternal grand mothers.
Society and the justice system should find a better way to handle their concerns. Unlike in European families in Asian families some men find their right to exploit their wives restricted by the grand parents leading to alienation of of children. The concept of child focus will fail if grand parental support is child development is ignored as happened in Europe and it will affect the children psychologically.