Just over 15 years ago, Sir Nicholas Wall, gave a frank and rather depressing description of the experience of children involved in family court proceedings.

In a speech to the organisation Families Need Fathers, Sir Nicholas – who was at the time the most senior family judge in England and Wales – described how children were drawn into parental disputes, often becoming “the battlefield and ammunition” in the process.

Separating parents, he argued, “rarely behave reasonably”.

The comments were not intended simply to shock but formed part of a wider effort to find a far more constructive approach of resolving issues once parents split up – and, in doing so, reduce the negative consequences of such disagreements.

It is a problem which persists to this day, as a new report by the Family Solutions Group (FSG) makes clear.

Continuing the kind of military metaphors used by Sir Nicholas Wall, the FSG – which was established in 2020 to examine the immense strain under which the family justice system operates – has told The Times that children still find themselves “caught in the crossfire of litigation”.

The FSG has claimed that the lack of an effective structure to deal with the issue means that many “relational and preventable” disagreements escalate and risk harming children.

Its report, Putting Children First, made a series of recommendations, including the creation of a Commissioner for Separated Families, to “ensure children’s rights and needs are represented and prioritised”.

The document was extremely timely, with its publication coming only days before an escalation of a different kind, one very much in the spirit of tackling the challenge which the FSG and others have identified.

The Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, David Lammy, announced that an innovative system known as Pathfinder was being extended across the whole of the country.

The statement followed the lengthy and generally successful Pathfinder pilot and also – in my opinion, appropriately – saw the model renamed as Child-Focused Courts.

It is not, I should point out, the first such attempt to avoid parental legal disputes damaging the very individuals whom such proceedings are meant to protect.

Even before the first Pathfinder trial, the Child Arrangements Programme – or CAP, for short – aimed to “assist families to reach safe and child-focused agreements for their child”.

Yet it did not prove to be as speedy as many judges, lawyers, parents and children would have liked.

By comparison, Pathfinder or now named Child-Focused Courts are designed to make children proceedings faster, safer, more investigative and less adversarial with an emphasis on the welfare and the voice of the child.

Its advocates claim that the pilot scheme has worked well overall and, in my experience, that is indeed the case.

Figures released by the Ministry of Justice, show that private law children cases which were concluded last autumn and dealt with under the CAP had taken 36 weeks on average to reach a resolution.

That is much longer than one case, for example, that I assisted with via the Pathfinder pilot, which took just 11 weeks from the initial application to the issuing of a final order.

One of the other striking features about the Pathfinder pilot has been the willingness of those running it to take on board advice from practitioners about how the model might be improved.

The Pathfinder pilot currently covers 10 of 43 court areas but, with £17 million of central Government funding, the renamed Child-Focused Courts will be rolled out across north and central England over the course of the next financial year and extended still further to the rest of England and Wales in the near future.

The news was greeted enthusiastically by the current President of the Family Division of the High Court, Sir Andrew McFarlane.

As much of a supporter of non-court dispute resolution (NCDR) as his predecessors, Sir Andrew felt that David Lammy’s announcement was a “game changer” for the family justice system.

I would offer my own qualified approval because every family’s circumstances are different and must be thoroughly assessed to establish which is the best way to reach a resolution.

As with any method of resolving family disputes, it is essential to establish what is most suitable for the clients and, in particular, any children affected.

It is one reason why Hall Brown Family Law has developed comprehensive expertise across the entire breadth of family law to ensure families receive the tailored support they need.

In addition to having what is objectively considered to be one of the most effective groups of litigators anywhere, we are among the very few boutique firms with a specialist Children law unit, dedicated to unpicking the delicate problems involved in such conflicts.

We also have a team of lawyers with extensive experience in various forms of NCDR, such as mediation, arbitration and collaborative law.

In doing so, we have almost anticipated Sir Andrew McFarlane’s prediction that a move away from an adversarial approach to children’s issues “may well have some resistance” from lawyers. That is certainly not the case with Hall Brown.

Our exposure to the Pathfinder pilot has not merely been academic either. Two of our six offices – in Leeds and Birmingham – have been involved in the pilot and, as a result, we have a practical understanding of how cases which it deals with are managed.

That experience has illustrated both its benefits and limitations and reinforced Hall Brown’s belief that it is important to explore all available options in order to allow families to make an informed decision about which route they wish to take in resolving their dispute.

At the heart of what we do – and what every family lawyer should bear in mind – is what the law governing such matters says.

The Children Act 1989 states explicitly that “any delay in determining the question is likely to prejudice the welfare of the child”.

That is a prospect which we should all and always strive to avoid and why Child-Focused Courts and NCDR are very much welcomed as elements within a broad suite of alternatives which can be tailored to the needs of individual families.