Claire Tyler: Relate and the Judge Speak Out

Claire Tyler Chief Executive Relate

Persuading policymakers that family breakdown is a major problem for our society and that there are things we can do about it is a crucial part of my job. Marshalling evidence drawn from research and our clients' experiences is part of this as is building partnerships with organisations who feel the same way. Nevertheless it can sometimes feel like an isolated position caught between doom and gloom predictions that we are on an inevitable downward spiral on one side and what can sometimes seem like real policy neglect of couple and family relationships on the other.

It was therefore both surprising and heartening to read Coleridge J's recent speech to the Resolution annual conference (see May [2008] Fam Law 388). Surprising because although he works in the family courts he spent a good proportion of the speech talking about what happens to those families who do not become involved in the legal system as well as those that do. And heartening because while he did not held back on the diagnosis of the problem calling family breakdown as 'catastrophic as the meltdown of...

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