FNF Scotland hosts child law reform focus groups
Special meetings of FNF (Families Need Fathers) Scotland are to be held to act as focus groups for the civil servants running the Scottish Government review of family law in Scotland.
FNF group meetings across Scotland will be attended by Government officials during June and July as part of the current public consultation on the working of part 1 of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 (click here for report), which governs the arrangements for care of children when their parents separate.
They will be given insight into the personal, financial and relationship costs of the current system from people who have experience of it, and hear their suggestions for changes.
The meetings will take place in Dundee on 20 June, Aberdeen on 21 June, Glasgow on 27 June and Edinburgh on 2 July. Attendance at the meeting will be free but to help plan for numbers anyone interested in attending is asked to register via the foregoing links.
FNF Scotland National Manager, Ian Maxwell, says, "We are delighted that the civil servants will be using our regular meetings as 'focus groups'. The majority of attendees at our monthly groups are separated fathers but we also have a regular presence of mothers, grandparents, new partners and aunts and uncles at our Aberdeen group. Most are shocked by how bruising, slow and expensive it is to go to court and how difficult it is to enforce a court order one made – and above all how the process can put intolerable stress on the children involved when their parents are belittling and undermining each other. The vast majority of research as well as common sense indicates that children do better in most areas of their lives when both parents are meaningfully involved in their lives.
"We believe a rebuttable presumption of shared parenting after separation will help the individuals involved draw up arrangements that genuinely put the interests of their children first. There are too many incentives in the 'winner takes all' approach of the current system that promote character attacks on each parent by the other and which damage relationships long after their court case is over and the sheriff has gone home."
Public consultation on the working of the present law runs until 7 August 2018.