UK's crisis-ridden family courts are failing children

The test of a society is how it treats its children, but our family courts are in crisis. Reform cannot be more urgent, writes Robert Hines

The family courts are in crisis. Parents wait months, sometimes years, for hearings that decide where children will live or how finances will be divided. Judges, lawyers, social workers and, above all, families are ground down by a process that is slow, adversarial and bewildering. Reform is not optional. It is urgent.

The causes are hardly a mystery. Courts are drowning in cases, their backlogs worsened by the pandemic. There are too few judges and staff to manage the load. Reports from Cafcass officers, psychologists and social workers arrive late because those services are overstretched. Legal aid cuts mean more parents appear without lawyers, dr