A Genuinely Child-Friendly Family Court?

Today I want to talk about the reworking of the family court system in Belize.

In 2015, Belize launched its first child‑friendly family court, supported by UNICEF and the Government of Belize. This was a structural redesign aimed at reducing trauma and making the legal process accessible to children: a genuinely child-focussed approach, both for family law issues like custody, and for children facing charges. It began as a pilot program in Punta Gorda and has expanded to being the nation-wide legal landscape.

This is radical. While every philosophy of family law generally claims to be child-centred or “working for the best interest of the child”, the policy thrust often demonstrates otherwise, with a focus on “protection” or “domestic violence”: and of course, these prioritise the mother. That is certainly the case here in Australia.

In Belize, everything is child-centred. Settings are non-intimidating, with friendly colours, and a single-entry hub rather than an imposing courtroom or layers of cold bureaucracy. Staff are properly trauma-informed - a term that has been so distorted in Australia as to almost become a red flag - and trained to interview children and get to the truth of the matter. This is something that occurs at the state level across Australia - the use of JIRT officers (joint investigative response teams) at the frontline of child protection - but does not occur at the federal level, to my knowledge, with the Family Court. The Federal Circuit and Family Court rely instead on a specialist arm, Child Dispute Services, who engage with the children through psychologists and social workers. Although doubtless excellent at their job, they are not forensic investigators who are trained to determine not only when a crime is taking place, but when a false allegation is likely because the child has been coached by one parent or the other.

The support staff provided by the court in Belize are also trained social workers - this is not either / or. When we look at coverage of what the court actually handles, it is no different to courts here in Australia. A mother who is allegedly abusive to her two sons. A 13-year-old girl who was put into her aunt’s care because she was being sexually abused by her father while her mother sat by. A separated couple who have come to mediate a parenting arrangement for their 7-year-old - they end up with dad getting weekdays, mum getting weekends, and everyone leaving happy.

And, of course, juvenile justice issues as well as Family Law ones: situations where children need support as they face accountability and consequence.

This blog by a UNICEF worker at the time describes that original Punta Gorda court:

With play rooms, interview rooms with video link technology, (protecting the child from having to testify facing their alleged attacker) and staff and social workers trained specifically on children’s rights – the new facility is a pilot project in a country with a fresh commitment to providing children in all districts with a justice system that protects them and respects their rights.

The blog includes a 5 minute video explaining it all. Near the end (4:00) is a telling section, where Dale Cayetano, Director of the Belize Family Court, says:

there is a perception that the Family Court is a female court. That’s not true. For instance, a man can apply for maintenance if he has custody of the child, and if a man is being abused by his spouse, he can apply for a protection order. The same type of experience we give to the mothers, we give to the fathers.

This would not reflect policy - it is extremely unlikely that anyone at UNICEF said, “well, we have to stop being mother-centred”. It reflects reality - to place the child at the centre of family law, the mother has to be displaced from that position.

Not forgotten, ignored or blamed. Simply put on the same level as the father. No more, no less. And the Director recognises that because it is the reality of what practice must achieve to create something child centred.

Have they succeeded? We can’t tell. Because the moment they decided to make this arrangement child-friendly rather than female focussed, the world’s media turned their back. They refuse to discuss, critique or acknowledge it.

As I often do, I challenge you to check for yourself. I have used search engines, research tools, all four major AI models. I can find no coverage in the media whatsoever - just UNICEF press releases and Belizian government publications.

Every jurisdiction, every statutory body, claim they are “child friendly”, “child centred”, “working in the best interests of the child”. In Australia, Mark Dreyfus used the term repeatedly even as he gutted section 60B of the Family Law Act and stripped children of the protection of having both parents making decisions for them, contrary to Article 18 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In reality, not only is the child regularly not the central focus of Family Law legislation and reform, they are not even regarded as such.

In Australia, the Federal Circuit and Family Court follow DV best practise principles, available here, which prioritise safety every step of the way and, most importantly, allow the overriding of all other principles when a safety issue is at hand.

This is not limited to the Court. The underlying framework is the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and Their Children 2010–2022. As part of that plan, ANROWS developed a risk assessment framework “designed to guide states and territories in developing, revising or evaluating risk assessment frameworks, tools and practices”. And under CoAG, all the states, territories and federal government signed on. The principles of this framework are so gynocentric - there is simply no other word, though they use “gendered” - that they actually contain the comment, “Current literature is moving towards including children also as survivors of violence”. This is a horrific acknowledgement that ‘current literature’ in many cases does NOT recognise children as survivors of violence because it is entirely women-focussed: eg the regular use of the term “femicide” when describing domestic homicide, and the reference to the “gendered (ie female-centred) nature of violence against women and children” despite boys experiencing more abuse and neglect across all categories except domestic sexual assault.

The principles of the risk assessment framework are superficially reasonable, but are in fact terrifying.

The first says safety is the core priority - entirely reasonable, until you consider justice or human rights or children’s rights, which all take a back seat.

The second says perpetrators must be “kept in view” and “workers… must also keep the focus on the behaviour of the perpetrator, rather than only on the protective strategies of survivors.” Again, entirely reasonable - there is no point saying you will protect someone and then not keep an eye on what you are protecting them from - until you remember, these ‘perpetrators’ have often faced no investigation whatsoever. They may be “alleged” perpetrators. They may be accused, not convicted. Once again, the presumption of innocence is forgotten.

This is highlighted by the third principle. “A survivor’s assessments of their own risk should be considered one of the primary elements of a risk assessment”. A woman is in danger if she assesses herself in danger.

Not based on evidence, examination, conviction, or being beyond reasonable doubt. She’s at risk if she feels that she’s at risk.

And again, this is reasonable if we are talking about crisis. If a woman rings 000 and says, “I don’t feel safe”, I have no problem with a squadcar being dispatched, sirens blaring.

But in a courtroom, where evidence and law and fundamentals of justice should reign supreme? No, the mentality of “prioritise safety and abandon all else” should not dominate.

Yet dominate it does. We not only allow ‘victims’ to testify by Zoom or CCTV, rather than be in the same room as the alleged perpetrator - reasonable, the same as they do in Belize - but ‘perpetrators’ are forbidden to personally cross-examine claims. This is a massive disadvantage, since in a DV case or family law issue, the ‘perpetrator’ will have been present and have the most intimate knowledge of what did and didn’t happen. They will understand the details and the nuance of the incidents and the relationship in a way that cannot possibly be conveyed to a third party such as a barrister.

And the bar for such things is low: the ‘Best Practise Principles’ cited above acknowledge that these protections mean, “Section 102NA of the Family Law Act prohibits an alleged perpetrator personally cross-examining the other party”. The Act itself specifically says that this comes into effect if there is an allegation of DV, and one party is convicted or just charged with violence or just the threat of violence, OR if the court deems it should apply. The court has the power to deem this because it was requested by either party or an Independent Children’s Lawyer, or just purely on its own volition.

We see similar principles in the Central Practice Direction document for family law case management, that the case managers and independent children’s lawyers assigned to handle these cases have to follow. In the Core Principles (section 3.1), “safety” is number 1, “focussing on the child” or any variant thereof does not rate a mention. Section 1.7 says:

1.7 The safety of parties and children and protection from the consequences of abuse and violence remains a priority for the Courts. No obligation or requirement in this Central Practice Direction should be taken to require parties to put themselves or their children at risk or to compromise or attempt to do so in circumstances that are unsafe or where concerns about abuse or violence compromise their ability to negotiate fair or reasonable outcomes. No part of this Central Practice Direction should be read or interpreted in a manner that is inconsistent with the prioritisation of the best interests of children and safe and sustainable outcomes for families.

Note that last line - “nothing we do for safety shall be regarded as anything other than the best interests of the child” - even if the effect is the opposite.

And under the current legislation, the opposite is exactly what we have.

As I have explored before, the principles of section 60CC of the Family Law act, which outline “How a court determines what is in a child’s best interests”, show that the primary determinant is (60CC par 2):

(a) what arrangements would promote the safety (including safety from being subjected to, or exposed to, family violence, abuse, neglect, or other harm) of:

(i) the child; and

(ii) each person who has care of the child (whether or not a person has parental responsibility for the child);

There are other determinants, the last of which is:

(e) the benefit to the child of being able to have a relationship with the child’s parents, and other people who are significant to the child, where it is safe to do so;

So it is recognised that children having a relationship with their parents is important, but the court also has to consider the next paragraph (60CC pa 2A):

In considering the matters set out in paragraph (2)(a), the court must include consideration of:

(a) any history of family violence, abuse or neglect involving the child or a person caring for the child (whether or not the person had parental responsibility for the child); and

(b) any family violence order that applies or has applied to the child or a member of the child’s family.

This section is specifically designed to ensure 2(a) is given greater weight than 2(e) (or anything else). In isolation, a focus on safety is not unreasonable. But by making the safety of any member of the child’s family, or anyone who has care of the child, the priority, and by making the threshold, not a conviction but a family violence order, then we simply no longer have a child-centred approach. We have a protection-centred approach.

And we also have an incentive to abuse family violence orders.

So we get exactly what we have now: the overwhelming majority of people who appear before the Family Court - around 85% based on the 2012 review, 91% on more recent figures - claiming they are victims of DFV.

And we have a court swamped by such claims, taking years to decide matters.

And children, through interim orders that then take years to revise (if ever), being put into the care of the mother to “play it safe”.

We have a risk assessment tool designed for crisis situations being abused to tie the hands of our Family Court magistrates and force them to view everything through the lens, not of the child’s best interest, but of the safety of the mother and her extended family: all based, not on forensic investigation, but on “a feeling of being at risk in the moment”.

The Court is a mess - every review says so, every professional who comes into contact with the Court says so, almost every child who has been through it says so. But its core function in the minds of the people who write the laws and guidelines and risk assessments we saw above - to ensure the mother gets custody, and child support - is working as intended. Hence they only ever want ‘reform’ of the existing structure - generally in the wrong direction - not the root-and-branch changes needed.

So it is sadly no surprise that when a country like Belize shows us a better way - a truly child-centred way - our captured politicians and media just don’t want to know.