I’m contacted multiple times a week, sometimes two or three times in a day, by people asking - begging - me to attend their family court hearing. I’m very sorry, but I just don’t have the capacity to attend almost any, and as well, I would be uncommissioned and unpaid. There is currently no possibility for lay people to attend, observe and anonymously report on family court cases, as @KitzingerCelia and other professionals do for the @OpenJusticeCoP, because the Court of Protection sits in public so anyone can attend.

Earlier today I emailed Cardiff family court asking for a link to a hearing that I know is being held on a hybrid basis, ie, some people in court, some people remotely. Cardiff is one of the pilot family court reporting centres... I copied in the judge. I have just had a reply back from the judge's clerk asking how I knew that the hearing was to be done via remote link. This is a completely inappropriate question, for pretty obvious reasons, and something a journalist should not be asked.

This Commissioner's report on @HfdsCouncil children's services, 12 months after my @BBCPanorama exposing desperate social work practice, confirms everything I uncovered, and heartbreakingly, so much more.

https://twitter.com/MartinBarrow/status/1666071424014876673

@MartinBarrow has picked out some examples of terrible things that were inflicted on families by a system that seems unwilling to care - or incapable of decent practice.

Friday afternoon, and a curious tale about findings of rape and domestic abuse in the family court, and what then happens with the financial side of a divorce. I have permission from HHJ Rogers to report. It relates to Kate Griffiths MP and former MP and minister Andrew Griffiths People may recall that Brian Farmer of PA and me for @tortoise fought for over a year to be able to report that over a 10 year relationship with Kate Griffiths, Andrew Griffiths serially abused and raped her, as found by HHJ Williscroft. Those findings were not appealed.

A quick tweet thread about a family court hearing I attended this morning in front of Mr Justice Williams: two Special Guardians want to publish a book about their experience of going through the court process and how the local authority treated them. I attended a previous hearing in this case a few weeks ago, which ended up being mainly used for directions. I have permission to publish what happened in the court hearing today as long as everything is anonymised.

I'm angry today. When researching the @BBCPanorama, I emailed many of the councillors who spoke in outrage at the @HfdsCouncil EGM yesterday: none was willing to speak to me for the programme, or did not reply. I'm going to tweet their emails now:

https://twitter.com/louisetickle/status/1576177207524859905

This was from Cllr Philip Howells, chair of the children and young people's Scrutiny Committee:

The EGM at Plough Lane, Herefordshire Council is about to start. Live tweeting from now. Leader of the council is David Hitchener, of Independents for Herefordshire.

I am getting increasingly furious at public bodies' refusal to provide answers in response to legitimate media requests. Today, it is a week short of 3 months since I applied to a coroner for docs the Chief Coroner's guidance says should in principle be disclosed to the press. I've chased repeatedly. Nothing has been forthcoming. This is an inquest I attended, into the death of a woman by suicide, who had been in a horrendously abusive relationship. I want papers referred to in open court. I am entitled to these. I applied for them, giving reasons.

This is what I've been working on since this time last year - and it all started with an application to Mr Justice Keehan to be able to interview the families affected in four of his family court judgments. He gave me the most wide-ranging permission I've ever had - 1/

https://twitter.com/seethrujustice/status/1523267685718495233

Anyone involved in those four judgments could, if they wished, speak to me free of the constraints of S12. Anyone who consented could be quoted, and (bar the one ongoing case) did not need to be anonymised if they agreed to be named and go on camera. 2/

I thought I should send a message to everyone who's contacted me (without being abusive) following the Dispatches. I have received literally hundreds, possibly by now over a thousand messages from people about their experience in the family courts... Because of the sheer volume of contacts, and how long and complex many of these messages are, I've simply not been able to respond to them all. It would be a full time job for at least a couple of people. This is not an exaggeration.

Just come out of a (remote) hearing at Manchester Family Court. I asked for, and got, permission to report the following: This was a case in which @TamesideCouncil
removed children from their family, and placed them in LA care: there were issues with the manner of their removal which means the LA now needs to apply to a court to regularise that ongoing separation from their family.

Really important family court appeal, successfully brought against a deputy district judge's ruling, and highlighting his many and awful mistakes in deciding not to make findings of domestic abuse. bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/… The appeal was brought by a mother with @DrProudman acting as counsel. Original advice from a silk had been 'don't bother trying.'

You might remember that a couple of months ago, I started a crowdfunder to get the book by @JMoncktonSmith "In Control - Dangerous Relationships and How They End in Murder" out to all 381 Community Safety Partnerships in the country. CSPs commission Domestic Homicide Reviews... Within not very much time at all, £2,800 odd had been generously donated by lots of people, some of whom, I learned through messages we exchanged, had been bereaved as a result of domestic homicides.

Morning all. Am getting ready to live tweet the @HfdsCouncil Extraordinary General Meeting, starting at 10am, following the judgment of Mr Justice Keehan in a case where the council has apologised for comprehensively failing a family... #herefordEGM ..., and, amongst other appalling social work/management failures, a child's life support was withdrawn thanks to wrong legal advice + a DCS who chose to exercise shared parental resp to give permission for the child to die before her mother could reach the hospital #herefordEGM

Gearing up to livetweet the Herefordshire Extraordinary General Meeting at 10am tomorrow, which will discuss the *fourth* excoriating judgment by Mr Justice Keehan in three years, re its latest children's social work catastrophe - and that is not too strong a word #herefordEGM 1/ Anyone interested in attending, it's a remote EGM being livestreamed here: #herefordEGM 2/

Absolutely massive uplift in cases reported by Cafcass in its monthly figures for March 2021 - headlines: 30.7% or 1,472 more cases than March 2020. Highest ever number for March on record. Comparing the quarter ending March 2020 with this year, there are (for 2021) fewer public law, or care cases, and more private law cases (parental separation with child dispute).

I've just launched the 'Prevent Domestic Homicides crowdfunder to get @JMoncktonSmith's vitally important book 'In Control - Dangerous Relationships And How They End In Murder' to all 342 Community Safety Partnerships across the UK. bit.ly/3wUC9qk With huge thanks to @BloomsburyBooks for heavily discounting the book and covering postage/packing. So good of them. Would be v grateful for a RT @caitlinmoran @RachelRileyRR @basialcummings @Dontlookback198 @LDNVictimsComm @VeraBaird @nicolejacobsST

Coming back on this morning because I’m still feeling raging, upset and shaky about something that happened to me yesterday when I went on a run. 15 or so minutes into the run, so just about past the pain barrier and when it’s starting to feel tolerable, a guy I later see is wearing a yellow dayglo jacket cycles up behind me. “Coming through” he calls. I move to the left.

I am pretty fed up to have been told today that the Transparency Review oral evidence is going to be heard behind closed doors. This is the Review instigated by the President of the family division of the high court examining whether the family justice system should be more transparent in its workings - workings that have come in for sustained criticism for years. Workings that go on behind closed doors.

Finally got myself a minute to put up the judgment on the rehearing of the notorious Tolson appeal case from I think Jan/Feb this year. It was heard by Mrs Justice Judd. I attended most of it - judgment here bit.ly/3fJZmmA Recap on thread from earlier today: the two rape allegations that Tolson dismissed in such outrageous terms were found to have happened. All the mother's other domestic abuse allegations but one were also found as fact.

Right, I just had a massive panic that I couldn't link the judgment I was just tweeting about to 'that' notorious Tolson appeal. But I can. So here goes. Again. Remember that Tolson 'rape isn't rape if you don't fight back' (paraphrasing) appeal case? I wrote about it here: theguardian.com/commentisfree/…