The contribution of health and social adversity to public and private family court proceedings: a public health approach

Families involved in family court proceedings are at the “sharp end” of a spectrum of disputes concerning their children’s upbringing. Emerging evidence shows that, whether public (state intervention and, in many cases, removing a child from the home) or private (between parents about child arrangements), poor existing parental health is associated with higher rates of proceedings. Discovering upstream health and social determinants of proceedings, including whether these factors explain between-area variation in rates of proceedings, could inform primary preventive interventions to support parenting, improve health and wellbeing, reduce conflict and adversity and prevent court involvement. It could also inform secondary preventive measures to mitigate the adverse health effects of legal processes on vulnerable families and debates on legal aid and alternative dispute resolution. I shall take advantage of innovations in whole-country administrative data sharing to develop a public health approach to family justice to address these problems. In what represents a step-change for family justice research, I aim to use linked data from courts and health in England and Wales to examine upstream determinants of court involvement and possible impacts of abolition of legal aid in private proceedings, as well as contribute to the development of re-usable of data.