Towards a Family Justice Observatory: national call for evidence

The research team behind 'Towards a Family Justice observatory', a project aiming to improve the generation and application of research in the family justice system, has issued a national call for evidence as a means of engaging with stakeholders in an open and transparent way to ascertain opinions and ideas.

Earlier this year, Family Law reported that a research team had been appointed by the Nuffield Foundation to scope the remit and design of a new family justice observatory. The background to this initiative is explained in a document written by Bryan Rogers, Liz Trinder and Teresa Williams,Towards a family justice observatory to improve the generation and application of research. The scoping study is now underway and the research team have issued a national call for evidence.

The call for evidence aims to better understand how organisations use research evidence in policy and practice. Views are also sought on priorities for any new family justice observatory (England and Wales). Submissions are invited from policy, practice and research leads on behalf of their organisations representing one or more of the following stakeholder groups within the family justice system:

• Practitioners (eg judges, lawyers, barristers, experts, social workers).
• System-wide users (eg national and local policy makers).
• Researchers and analysts (eg academic, government, independent).
• Parties to cases (eg young people, parents, extended family members, other carers).

Further background information and guidance regarding responses to the call is available here.

In order to submit a response:

• Download our Submission Template to an appropriate place on your computer.
• Enter your responses into the text boxes within the template.
• Once complete, send it via email with the subject 'Call for Evidence Response' to: observatory.scoping.study@lancaster.ac.uk

The closing date for this call is Monday, 31 October 2016.

For further information visit the project website. 

---

An in-depth article by the project team is published in September Family Law at [2016] Fam Law 1184.