LFJC Annual Conference

The first national annual conference for the 41 Local Family Justice Councils was held in Bath in April 2006. The main purpose of the conference and of the establishment of the Local Family Justice Councils (LFJCs), was to encourage joint participation in the family justice process and to foster the interdisciplinary approach. Welcoming the 41 delegates and the members of the national Family Justice Council (FJC), the President of the Family Division, Sir Mark Potter, said that it was vital that the local FJCs felt free to make their input to the national council and that the national FJC actively sought such input.

Mark Ormerod, from the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA), said that a business plan for the national FJC was under preparation which LFJCs might wish to use when available to direct their activities in the year 2006-2007. The emerging themes were as follows.

• Domestic Violence: work on the production of a template for a training day on domestic violence was under preparation and would shortly be available to LFJCs.
• Contact: the report by Lord Justice Wall, Twenty-Nine child Homicides: Lessons still to be learnt on domestic violence and child protection was published in March 2006 (see [2006] Fam Law 344). The FJC would be reporting to the President in October 2006 on consent orders in contact cases. Input from LFJCs would be welcomed.
• An interagency perspective on family justice performance: the composition of LFJCs brought together people and agencies who could take an overall look at improving the performance of the family justice system. That had been ably demonstrated by the work done by the Avon and Somerset LFJC. Such work could be delegated to LFJC sub-committees.
• Experts: there would be continuing work on experts at a national level on.
• Private Law: input would be needed from LFJCs on how effectively the Private Law Programme was working.

See July [2006] Fam Law for the full news article.