I often talk in Legal Lines about dispute resolution options for separating couples and preferably for those to be taken up prior to a Court application being made. If the Court is involved however, Judges will themselves also encourage the couple to take up dispute resolution through the proceedings.
Within applications concerning children, the Court process itself will usually include a direction for the parents to attend a parenting course – which was known as a SPIP, or Separated Parents Information Programme.
Updated parenting course
This course has now been revamped, and Planning Together for Children is the new name for the parenting course run by CAFCASS which started in April.
CAFCASS are the Child and Family Court Advisory and Support Service and they assist the Court in dealing with applications concerning children, for example conducting enquiries required by the Court and providing welfare reports and the like.
Programme structure
The new Planning Together for Children programme has three distinct parts to it.
There is an E-learning module which will take around 1.5 hours to complete, and a group session, in person, which is around 2.5 hours in length.
There is also a template Parenting Plan for participants to use, the idea is that one parent will fill it in to start with, sending it on to the other and it then passing between them as a working document until, ideally, they reach agreement or at least the points of disagreement are established. From the latter, the parents could then go on to a more formal dispute resolution process, for example, such as mediation to work through those areas of dispute and endeavour to reach a full agreement.
The intention is for the separated parents to use the template Parenting Plan having done at least part of the other two sessions so they approach its completion with the guidance they have read and discussed at the forefront of their minds. The programme is entirely child focused and provides information and guidance to
parents about conflict, its effect on children in particular, and communicating effectively with your co-parent.
Who can participate?
The direction to attend the programme presently comes from the Court, or CAFCASS itself where parents are in the Court system; and therefore are very much in conflict at that time.
Whilst anything that helps parents to help their children through such a difficult time in the family is welcomed, it is disappointing to practitioners such as ourselves who particularly promote dispute resolution, that the programme is only available presently to parents already in the Court system.
The previous SPIP course was open to all parents to attend, and so we could encourage our clients to go along to it, ideally long before conflict had reached a point where one parent felt a Court application had to be issued.
Previous feedback from SPIP had also shown so many parents commenting that they wished they had known of and attended the course earlier on as it helped them to understand about the effects of conflict on the children and family and learn better ways to deal with it and communicate.
We can help
If you need any advice or assistance with your parenting arrangements following relationship breakdown, please contact either me (Justine) or Dee at JLS Solicitors.