‘Pathfinder’ children courts to be expanded to more areas?

We wrote here back in 2022 about new ‘Pathfinder’ courts that were testing a new approach to dealing with cases involving disputes between parents over arrangements for their children.

The courts were initially being piloted in courts in North Wales and Dorset, and in April/May this year the pilot was extended to courts in Birmingham and Cardiff.

Sir Andrew McFarlane, the President of the Family Division, is now talking about rolling out Pathfinder to other court areas.

Sir Andrew describes Pathfinder as a ‘problem-solving court’, which replaces the current litigant-led approach of the family court with an approach that is much more child-led.

As Sir Andrew explained, under the current approach the court knows very little about the case at the first hearing, and the judge or magistrate has little option but to sit back and ask the parties what they say that the issues are, before making directions for the court process to go to the next stage.

The Pathfinder approach is quite different. Before the first hearing the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (‘CAFCASS’) will have spoken to the parents and to the children before compiling a substantial report describing the dispute and the children’s wishes and feelings.

Significantly, the report is called a ‘Child Impact Report’, being designed to encourage the parents to look at the impact of what they are doing upon their child, and consider what needs to be done to resolve that.

As Sir Andrew reports, the Pathfinder pilots have been very successful, with most cases being resolved at the first hearing. And where a further hearing is required, this will normally be a short one and, because there are fewer backlogs in Pathfinder courts, it will take place much sooner than under the old system.

Further to that, the experience in North Wales and Dorset is that fewer cases return to court for enforcement or other reasons, because both parents have been engaged, by the court, in resolving their dispute.

In short, Sir Andrew says that Pathfinder “is an altogether much more satisfactory method of resolving parental disputes within court proceedings; that is so from the perspective of parents, children, CAFCASS, domestic abuse professionals and the courts.”

In view of the success of Pathfinder, Sir Andrew is hoping to expand it to other court areas. He does, however, acknowledge that this will require an initial injection of funding in order to give CAFCASS resources to work up-front on new cases, whilst undertaking its ordinary role on those cases which are already in the system. Sir Andrew says he hopes to hold early discussions with ministers on the future of Pathfinder, and the potential for it to be rolled out to other court areas.

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