Women's Aid have responded to the Co-operative Parenting Following Family Separation: Proposed Legislation on the Involvement of Both Parents in a Child’s Life consultation.
Access the full response from Women's Aid (pdf)
Extract from Women's Aid response:
We recommend that where there are allegations of domestic violence:
- That the welfare of the child remain the court’s paramount consideration, with no dilution of this made by an amendment to the Children Act 1989 on shared/cooperative parenting.
- That the effective protection of children and their non-abusing parent be the primary consideration of the family justice system in both the short and long term
- That there is no assumption that a violent parent is a good parent or that they have stopped being abusive just because they say they have
- That the family justice system recognises that domestic violence neither begins nor indeed stops at the point of separation and can often continue long after separation
- That the views of children are taken seriously in line with international commitments, especially the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child (1989).
