Our pilot study focused on parents and special guardians’ experiences of public law care proceedings. You can read our briefing here

We published a paper on parent voice’ in public law proceedings in the Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law.

So far, we have held five policy workshops run by the peer researchers. The workshops provided a space for people with lived and professional experience of the criminal and family courts to reflect on findings and co-produce ideas for policy and practice reforms. Each policy workshop focused on a theme emerging from the research. Blogs about the discussion and proposed recommendations include:

• A reflection on the process of participatory policymaking and a summary of the discussion in the family courts workshop (January 2024).
• An overview of the second workshop on domestic abuse and how its handled in family proceedings (January 2025)
• An outline of the workshop covering the quality of legal representation and perceptions of legal aid (February 2025); 
• Special measures and other adaptations to court processes (September 2025); and court delays and their impact (October 2025).

We have been contributing to a blog series about the research – edited by Dr Amy Kirby - for the Social Legal Studies Association. This includes a blog on our methodology Collecting Stories about Encounters with the Law and reflections from our peer researchers about their involvement in the project  ‘Our experience is second to none: we’ve rode that ride, haven’t we?’

We produced a 3-minute film – funded by the Criminal Justice Alliance in collaboration with the Media Trust about lived experience and co-production in research.

Contact

If you have any questions or would like further information about this project, please contact g.hunter@bbk.ac .%75%6b" rel="nofollow"> g.hunter@bbk.ac.uk