Family policy is often under the spotlight in the UK and issues of the importance of marriage and relationship breakdown are likely to be hot topics in the General Election. Experts from the University of Bristol’s School of Law are collaborating with four other leading universities to form a new network to become the authoritative voice on family law and policy.
The Network on Family, Regulation and Society, led by the University of Exeter in collaboration with the Universities of Bath, Bristol and Cardiff, will produce high-quality research and pool expertise in areas such as child protection, family justice issues, cohabitation, and the effects of separation and divorce on children.
The partnership will harness a range of national and international research links to make an impact on policy and practice of family law in addition to providing responses to announcements made in parliament and media issues.
As well as addressing important issues within the area of family, regulation and society, the new network will also seek to encourage people into the field of law and social sciences research. This is in light of a recent Nuffield Foundation report that found there is a shortage of socio-legal researchers in the UK.
The Network will also include contributions from three specialist third sector organisations. These are One Plus One, Resolution and the Family Law Bar Association, who will all contribute to the process of setting future research agendas.
Professor Judith Masson from the University of Bristol’s School of Law, said: "It is really important that politicians consider how laws actually impact on families not merely what they want laws to achieve. Socio-legal research has provided a much broader understanding of the operation of laws and legal processes than the practice wisdom of lawyers and the judiciary.”
Anne Barlow, Professor of Family Law and Policy at the University of Exeter, said: “We now have an increasingly rich understanding of change and growing diversity in family structures, process and practices over the last decade. These will include parenting after parting, new reproductive technologies, children’s rights, changed living patterns, cross-border families and relationship breakdown. Our workshop will address the legal and policy implications of the profound recent changes in family life, locating these within a national, international and comparative context.
“Family policy is hotly debated in politics and problems can arise when debates are reduced to highly-emotive commentary without the research to back it up. This area of law and policy affects so many people in very personal, sensitive and intimate ways and it is critically important that quality research informs the debate.”
An agenda-setting workshop on Family, Regulation and Society, hosted by the Nuffield Foundation and jointly funded by the ESRC, AHRC, Nuffield and the Family Bar Association, will take place on 16 March.