Listen: Bristol Unpacked with barrister Lucy Reed, on opening the secretive family courts to scrutiny

The family courts, which make orders for children to be taken into care, have long been a hidden world, but that’s now changing. Neil talks to barrister and transparency campaigner Lucy about why this matters, and how the system needs to change.

Listen: Bristol Unpacked with Neil Maggs 24th February, 2025

Alex Turner, George Colwey and Neil Maggs

“It’s about the most serious thing, now we don’t have the death penalty, that any judge can do,” says this week’s Bristol Unpacked guest, barrister Lucy Reed, on the state’s powers to remove children from their families and take them into care.

The family courts in which these decisions happen, and where couples who are separating hammer out custody arrangements for their children, have until recently been extremely private – many would say secretive – places.

But a few weeks ago, on 27 January 2025, journalists were for the first time allowed, with some restrictions, to report from any family court across England and Wales. Lucy has played a part in that happening – as well as her day job as a barrister in the family courts, she chairs the Transparency Project, an organisation that pushes for greater openness around the workings of the courts.

Neil speaks to Lucy, who has also been an authorised ‘legal blogger’ covering the workings of the family courts for much of the last decade, about why opening them up to scrutiny is a big deal.

And with the children’s care system creaking under extreme pressure, both in the Bristol region and nationally, he also gets into some wider questions. Why are so many kids being taken into care? In extreme cases, how do some of them end up being deprived of their liberty in unsuitable and even unlawful places? And after many years of austerity have seen services for children and families cut and cut, how does the system need to change?

This hard-hitting episode is the last in the current series of Unpacked, after which we’ll be taking a short break. We hope you’ve enjoyed listening – don’t go anywhere, we’ll be right back in April.

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