Domestic Abuse Proceedings In Family Courts: Overlap And Pathways In Private And Public Family Justice

Domestic abuse proceedings in family courts are not studied at national level in England and Wales beyond basic national statistics. Until recently, research access to national family justice data has been restricted to incomplete sets of domestic abuse proceedings, with complex data sharing agreements to negotiate. The research phase of the Fellowship will combine (1) more easily accessed data on applications to family courts, (2) novel family court data, (3) new linkages between those family justice datasets and (4) additional linkages to Welsh demographics and children's social care data, to explore experiences of the family justice system for people who make or face allegations of domestic abuse in family courts, and associated persons including children.
Social workers identify concerns about violent forms of domestic abuse towards a parent in a third of children referrals assessments. Domestic abuse is a common experience among birth mothers whose children become subject to care proceedings, and features in over half of private child arrangement cases. Two types of protective measures were available in family courts throughout the proposed period of analysis, 2011 to early 2021, to prohibit molestation and to exclude or regulate presence in the family home. Breach of the former can be a criminal offence, although breach of the latter cannot. Both types of measures can be applied for at the same time, and in emergency situations the court can dispense with giving notice of the proceedings to the alleged abuser. Understanding where domestic abuse proceedings overlap with other types of private and public proceedings, and how families navigate them is important to ensure timely decisions that meet people's needs, to avoid vexatious litigation and to encourage applications where chilling effects may arise.
At present, there is a recognition that policymakers need knowledge gaps to be filled about progression through the family justice system and domestic abuse proceedings. The Ministry of Justice has a Pathways and Outcomes cross-cutting research theme, and additional interests in understanding case progression, case timeliness, drivers of demand, and how to meet the needs of domestic abuse victims with legal issues to resolve in family and criminal courts. Expertise is being sought such as that of the panel who provided evidence on domestic abuse allegations in private law children proceedings in the influential Harm Panel Report (2020) or the new office of Domestic Abuse Commissioner. The Fellowship aims to add context about how people use domestic abuse proceedings as they move through the family justice system, addressing four main objectives:
1. Increase knowledge around domestic abuse proceedings in family courts: Describe trends about applications for domestic abuse injunctions and their outcomes and address gaps from available national statistics.
2. Identify the overlap between domestic abuse proceedings and other proceedings in family courts: Compare the timing of domestic abuse cases relative to other types of cases in private public family law, and compare the family groups across domestic abuse cases. Explore the challenges and limitations of two additional linkages to demographics and children's social care data in Wales only, and the research value of the linkages for identifying the child population who lives with a parent involved in domestic abuse proceedings in Wales.
3. Explore the main pathways entering and moving through the family justice system for individuals who experience domestic abuse proceedings. Methods to be considered will include sequence analysis, event history and survival analysis. The factors associated with joining a pathway and those associated with re-shaping pathways will be explored using logistic regression or regression analysis.
4. Improve signposting by professionals to online informal support available to people in domestic abuse proceedings.