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A senior family lawyer has joined a former Hunter judge warning a severely under-resourced family court is putting children at risk.
It is national child protection week.
Slater and Gordon's Heather McKinnon says genuine concern for the families caught in the legal system is motivating senior professionals, such as former judge Giles Coakes and herself, to speak out.
Mr Coakes is concerned about a backlog of cases and lack of judges pushing Hunter families to breaking point.
Ms McKinnon said delays with arranging mental health and other professional assessments is also choking the system, and children are paying the price.
"Lawyers traditionally aren't known for political action, I suppose, but all of us who are in the jobs with kids are concerned that some serious things are starting to happen," she said.
"We're starting to see huge delays in getting those reports, and kids are being damaged in that time delay."
Ms McKinnon said the resource allocation is hit and miss, and support often fails to reach the women and children most in need.
"We've got a lot of funding going into but is seems a lot of us who are senior in the field are worried that it's not targeted and it's not triaged properly," she http://bestvideobabymonitor.co.uk/shop/ said.
"My solution would be, for example I would like to see a very well trained domestic violence team in each each major police station, headed by women officers."
Topics:family-law,courts-and-trials,newcastle-2300
First posted September 14, 2015 06:49:47
