Family law organisation Resolution has launched a new scheme designed to help separated parents focus on the needs of their children.
Announced at Resolution’s annual conference, Family Matters will begin as a pilot project based in Crewe, Newcastle Upon Tyne and Oxford. Trained mediators with an expertise in family law will work with separated – and separating – parents not eligible for legal aid, helping them to reach constructive, child-centred family agreements.
The scheme has received more than £650,000 in funding from the Department for Work and Pensions’ Innovation Fund.
Resolution Chair Liz Edwards said:
“This exciting new project builds on the approach that Resolution and its members have taken over the past 30 years: helping people manage separation and divorce in a way that minimises conflict and puts children first. Our long term aim is that this will provide a model for supporting separating families that can be replicated nationwide.”
The scheme’s ‘guides’ would, she said, be working to:
“…to support people going through separation and provide them with the advice and support they need at a very difficult time. The emphasis is on enabling separating families to maintain lines of communication and reach agreements together.”
Resolution was founded in 1982 by John Cornwell and other family lawyers who “were concerned at the aggressive and confrontational approach often taken in family law.”
The group set out to: “…improve the practice of family law to prevent the legal process increasing acrimony between separating couples and to avoid family law being seen as simply another type of litigation.”
