Inside the Family Drug and Alcohol Court: the judicial perspective

The Family Drug and Alcohol Court [FDAC] is an alternative and innovative approach to conducting and determining public law care proceedings involving allegations of harm to children in cases where parental substance use is a significant factor. FDAC now operates throughout England and Wales and has recently been piloted in Northern Ireland. It has been extensively evaluated as to its significant cost-saving benefits and, more importantly, as to its outcomes for children and families. This trauma-informed, problem-solving approach provides integrated multi-disciplinary support for parents across substance use, domestic abuse, mental health and parenting domains. It has recently been shown to facilitate reunification of children with parents in 52% of cases compared to 13% of children in standard proceedings and parents in FDAC were 4 times more likely to become abstinent from substances than their counterparts in standard proceedings.
 
As well as the integrated, multi-disciplinary support delivered to parents within the proceedings, the other significant reason for the remarkable success of FDAC is the very different role of the judge. Described as an ‘agent of change’, the allocated judge is chosen from a pool of experienced family judges who have been trained specifically to support and motivate parents in an empathic and trauma-informed manner. As well as presiding over the traditional court hearings, the FDAC judge meets with the parent and with the key professionals every fortnight in the absence of lawyers in order to receive updates about the progress that has been made over the preceding two-week period, giving credit for positive progress and also challenging parents and giving encouragement where it might otherwise be required.
 
This study aims to focus on the judicial role within FDAC proceedings, exploring the differences in the way that FDAC proceedings are conducted by judges and considering why this approach works so well. The research is unique in its design because it has been developed by an experienced FDAC judge who will himself carry out semi-structured interviews of serving and retired colleagues with a broad range of judicial and FDAC experience and who sit in family courts across much of the United Kingdom. Qualitative analysis of the interview data will identify the impact – both positive and negative – that this difficult area of work has on the judges in question. The specific challenges and rewards of this innovative approach will be analysed to better understand the impact of this work upon the agent of change, allowing themes to be identified which will inform recommendations as to how the impact of this work might be better managed or how this very effective, alternative approach might be transferred into other areas of family and criminal justice throughout Europe.
 
The study will be undertaken during Spring 2024, reporting in early September 2024.