Sources of advice & assistance with specific issues

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Looking for an expert psychiatrist who does reports for court purposes ? These are contacts provided by a member :

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Werner Kierski, London, Tel: 020 8341 0107. Werners e-mail address is: [email protected] he however does not do court reports.

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is notified of the risk of prison for ignoring the order i.e. of being in contempt

In Anglo-Eastern Trust Ltd v. Kermanschahchi [2002] TLR 8/11/02 Ch.D it was held that "A court order could be enforced by committal even though the penal notice was not brought to the attention of the judge at the time the court order was sealed but was simply attached to a copy of the order upon service" [the defendant's solicitor had tacked on the penal notice himself without referral to the court].

So now do not bother to ask the judge for a penal notice to be attached to your Contact order - just add one yourself on the front of the order and serve the order personally on the other party. The order must itself be in a suitable form for enforcement by committal - ie the party must know precisely what she has to do to comply with the order, which in practice means exact Contact times must be specified together with the exact venue for handover.

Here is a suitable form of wording (to be done in capitals) for your own Penal Notice:-

TO: MRS MOTHER (full name) OF 94 TORMENT HOUSE ETC (Address):- YOU MUST OBEY THE DIRECTIONS CONTAINED IN THIS ORDER [or, PARAGRAPHS m,n etc OF THIS ORDER]. IF YOU DO NOT YOU WILL BE GUILTY OF CONTEMPT OF COURT AND MAY BE SENT TO PRISON.

Ah, but what about Family Proceedings Rules 1991 Rule 4.21A I hear some of you say?This says that for purposes of enforcing section 8 orders County Court Rules Ord.29 r.1 [committal] applies with para.3 thereof substituted to read so that the court will only issue the order indorsed with a penal notice if the judge/district judge so directs. But - (i) This only stops you getting the court office to put the penal notice on, it says nothing about you adding it on yourself to the sealed order of the court exactly as happened in Anglo-Eastern Trust Ltd supra. (ii) It is not essential to the County court committal procedure, any more than the High Court, that the penal notice had to be stuck on by a court clerk - indeed, as case law establishes, it is strictly speaking not neccessary even to have a penal notice anyway [see eg Sofroniou v.Szigetti [1991] FCR 332n, [1990] TLR 618, CA], although the court may be less inclined to punish for contempt in that case. (iii) FPR 1991 r.4.21A only refers to County courts, so if you are in the High Court there will certainly be no problem.

NB: For a very useful case on committal in Children Act cases, and encouraging courts to follow that route for enforcement, see F v.F (Contact: Committal) [1998] 2FLR 237 CA. This case also lays out the duty of mothers to make Contact orders work.

s.1 Perjury Act 1911, which defines perjury for statements made on oath by sworn witnesses in judicial proceedings. S.5 is also useful, defining an offence of making false statements not on oath:-

"5. If any person knowingly and wilfully makes (otherwise than on oath) a statement false in any material particular, and the statement is made -

(b) in ..... a report.... which he is authorised or required to make... by any public general Act of Parliament for the time being in force; ....

he shall be guilty of a misdemeanour and shall be liable on conviction thereof on indictment to imprisonment, with or without hard labour, for any term not exceeding 2 years, or to a fine, or to both such imprisonment and fine."

So, this means that you can initiate criminal proceedings as soon as you get a CAFCASS report which you can prove contains material falsehoods wilfully perpetrated by the CFR. The "public general Act" here is of course the Children Act 1989, s.7. Pity that prison with hard labour has now been abolished.

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I was recently asked to help someone who had problems getting information from the school his child attended and numerous complaints to school, governors, lea seemed to be getting nowhere. So I asked myself - what is the legal basis for the supposed rights of parents to receive information from schools, and what can one do if complaints are not successful? The DfEE leaflet "Schools, Parents, & Parental Responsibility" 0092/2000 does not really answer this question.

The primary legislation appears to be s.408 Education Act 1996 "Provision of Information" and there are various regulations made in consequence, notably SI 2000/297 "Education (Pupil Information) (England) Regulations 2000. If complaining to the Head Teacher/ Governing Body/ LEA is not successful then it seems what one should do is invoke s.409 of the 1996 Act "Complaints & Enforcement". This mandates LEAs to have a complaints procedure which would in particular have to deal with complaints based on s.408 about information not being provided, and by s.409(4) one has to go through this complaints procedure before complaining to the Secretary of State (SOS). So what one should do is issue a formal complaint to the LEA expressly referring to s.409, demanding a decision within a reasonable time (say 21 days), and warning of prospective complaint to the SOS.

If the LEA decision is not satisfactory then complain to the SOS under ss.496,497 asking him to exercise his powers to give directions to the LEA or Governig Body (or both) in regard to the exercise of their powers and performance of their duties.

If that fails then the only ultimate recourse would be to Judicial Review in the High Court.

If anybody has gone through the s.409, or ss.496,497, stages I would be interested to hear from them.