Judge blasts plan to let social workers decide complex family law cases

The Family Court has reportedly rounded on federal government plans to let social workers sort out custody battles, saying that experience judges should be the ones to decide such complex issues.

Family Court Chief Justice John Pascoe says that people without legal expertise shouldn’t be left to decide on issues such as family violence, according to an exclusive News Corp report. He was commenting on plans to speed up court proceedings by setting up trial ‘parent management hearings’ (PMH) at a cost of $12.7 million. A PMH will be conducted by a panel of psychologists, lawyers, child development experts and social workers, who will hear and decide on family law disputes.

“PMHs ‘will be given powers to make binding determinations on simple family law matters, which would otherwise require consideration by the family law courts’,” according to a federal government budget review document outlining the four-year trial.

But Pascoe, who is in charge of the Family Court of Australia, told News Corp reporter Natasha Bita that the government’s plan allowed people who were not legally trained, such as psychologists and social workers, to make legal decisions, leading to the risk they could make errors in the rule of law.

“With respect, those panel members will not have the knowledge or the expertise to determine these matters in the way that is consistent with established jurisprudence,” the top judge said. Instead, he wants the panels to hear only cases that have been referred to a PMH by the Family Court.

But Attorney General Christian Porter told News Corp that some family disputes were taking too long to be settled in court, with nearly a third of cases dragging on for a year. He’s ruled out appointing more judges to deal with the backlog, according to the report.

Do you think the slowness of the Family Court process is a problem? Do you think social workers and psychologists are capable of deciding family disputes?