Putting Children First When Feelings Run High

19 May 2012

Britain was traditionally a very reserved country - a nation of people who played their cards very close to their chest and kept their feelings in check, especially in public.

Two very different incidents in the 1990s have often been credited with helping us deal with our emotions in a more public and open way - Paul Gascoigne's tears at the 1990 World Cup made it ok for British men to cry, while the death of Princess Diana in 1997 led to a mass outpouring of grief on a scale never seen before in Britain.

However, being more comfortable with displaying our emotions doesn't make us any better at handling them. Keeping perspective when feelings run high, especially during something as devastating as a divorce, is almost impossible - and the impact is multiplied many times over when children are involved.

Last week, family law hit the news as the Family Justice Review published the findings of a report aimed at overhauling the way divorces are handled by the legal system, especially in those cases where children are involved.

The most headline-grabbing aspect was the Review's damning criticism of the speed and efficiency with which cases are processed. The report claimed children torn between two parents can sometimes be forced to wait a year to discover the outcome of the case - the damage this can cause to a child's welfare cannot be underestimated.

At DAWN Advice we deal with a lot of families that have become irreparably fractured and in some instances, it is necessary for the case to go to court for the appropriate resolution to be reached - but the review makes clear that this process needs to be speeded up to minimise the damage to the children involved.

The difficulties at the heart of the issue are obvious - emotions are sky-high and communication has sometimes reduced to zero - but finding that sense of perspective and doing the right thing for the most important people, the children, should always be top of the agenda.

People can seek family law advice from DAWN Advice's legally-trained staff by contacting the new advice line on 0844 4111 309.