Another Monday, another chance for the great and the good of family justice to log on and pretend they're listening. Today the Family Justice Council stages its 12th open meeting, beamed straight into laptops across the land via MS Teams from 11am until 1.30pm. Registration remains open until noon on Wednesday, though punters must fire off any questions in advance and accept that the council might not bother answering them all.
It's billed as an opportunity for the public to observe the council's work and lob a few queries at the end. In practice it functions as a polite window into a non-statutory advisory body established after a 2002 consultation and up and running by July 2004. The outfit promotes an inter-disciplinary approach, monitors how the family justice system performs in England and Wales, and dispenses expert advice to the Family Justice Board on whatever reforms it deems necessary for continuous improvement.
After the 2011 Family Justice Review the council rejigged its structure; its secretariat now sits inside the private office of the President of the Family Division. Its membership draws a representative cross-section of those who work in the system, use it, or simply take an interest. All very sensible on paper. The real test, of course, is whether these gatherings ever produce anything that actually strengthens families rather than adding another layer of bureaucratic varnish.
Past attendance and the ritual of remote engagement
Last year's equivalent event on 7 July 2025 pulled in more than 70 remote guests. The year before, on 22 July 2024, the figure topped 80 observers. Numbers that sound respectable until you remember how many families actually tangle with the courts each year. Still, the format persists: register, submit questions early, watch the professionals discuss how best to tinker with the machinery that decides who gets the children, the house and the future.
One can't help noticing the emphasis on "inter-disciplinary" everything. It conjures images of psychologists, social workers and lawyers huddled together, each adding their favoured ideological spice to the stew. The danger, as any parent who's been through the system will quietly tell you, lies in forgetting that the family itself is the basic unit worth protecting, not an inconvenient bundle of competing rights to be arbitrated by experts.
The council's own history reveals a pattern of adaptation rather than revolution. Post-review restructuring kept it advisory, not statutory, which at least preserves some distance from the more enthusiastic state expansionists. Today's meeting, like its predecessors, offers the public a seat at the virtual table without granting them any real vote on outcomes. Observers can watch the professionals monitor effectiveness, advise on reforms, and generally affirm that the system is mostly working, thank you very much.
