kylie beckhouse executive director family law legal aid nsw the child protection roadshow what is...
TRANSCRIPT
KYLIE BECKHOUSE
EXECUTIVE DIRECTORFAMILY LAW
LEGAL A ID NSW
The Child Protection RoadshowWhat is happening internationally and
what can we learn?
Multi-disciplinary team approaches to child representation
Recommendation:
In children’s law practices, trial a multidisciplinary team approach to the delivery of child representation services
Why?
To test whether there are benefits that children could derive from a multidisciplinary team approach
To assess whether this approach could be as cost effective as traditional methods of legal service delivery
Better links with universities
Recommendation:
Forge closer links between children’s legal practices and university law schools and clinical programs
Why?To improve the standard of child representation in
AustraliaTo encourages good lawyers and social workers to
specialise in this areaLet’s professionalise child representation, so that it
develops into an area of legal expertise
Training and support
Recommendation:
Dedicate funding and resources to supporting, monitoring and training child representatives so they can deliver higher quality child representation services
Why?Investing resources in effective monitoring processes,
training and supervision improves the quality of child representation services.
There is a connection between the resourcing of child protection and family law legal systems and the quality of legal services delivered.
Children’s involvement in court processes
Recommendation:
That Children’s Courts and the Family Courts develop principles to guide decision making about the participation of children in legal processes including judicial interactions with children.
Why?
To inform decision making and the participants
To articulate appropriate processes and procedures
To ensure that judicial meetings are conducted in a safe, transparent and child inclusive manner.
Feedback tools
Recommendation:
Introduce a system-wide feedback mechanism for child representation services in order to elicit the views and perspectives of people across the system, including children
Why?To ensure child representatives are meeting the needs of
the children they represent and the family law systemTo improve the performance of child representativesTo monitor performance and assess whether skill levels are
appropriate