The Child's Voice

In 2024, 41 children aged 10 to 19 sat down with researchers from Southern Cross University in Australia and told them what participation in family law proceedings had felt like.

One of them, Troy, summarised it in six words: talk to us, not about us.

That sentence is not a research finding. It is the testimony of a child who had watched adults make decisions about his life while speaking to each other rather than to him. It encapsulates, in the clearest possible terms, the gap between what child participation law promises and what family court practice delivers.

What the Lundy Model requires

In 2007, Professor Laura Lundy at Queen's University Belfast published a conceptual framework for Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the article that gives children the right to express their views and have those views taken seriously in decisions that affect them.

Lundy's argument was precise: voice alone is not enough. Children have a right to four things, in sequence. Space: a safe and inclusive environment in which to express views. Voice: the opportunity to express those views freely. Audience: the assurance that views will be listened to by decision-makers. Influence: the assurance that those views will be acted upon or that there will be a clear explanation if they are not.

The Lundy Model is not aspirational. It is the framework through which the UK government's policy on children's participation is formally structured. Its four elements have a rational chronological order: space, voice, audience, influence. Each one is a prerequisite for the next. Without space, there is no voice. Without audience, there is no influence.

What the evidence from the family court shows is that children are routinely denied all four.

What the Cafcass data shows

In 2022–23, Cafcass, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, was working with 56,534 children's cases featuring 87,546 children. At the end of March 2023, 32,904 cases were open with future known work, featuring 53,463 children.

Private law cases, the proceedings where parental separation, domestic abuse, and parental alienation allegations are most commonly found, represented 60% of Cafcass's total open caseload. Cases that went beyond first hearing took an average of 61 weeks to resolve, an increase of 22 weeks compared to pre-pandemic levels.

28.8% of private law children's cases had been open for longer than 52 weeks. For those 8,900 children, the period during which decisions about their lives were being made was over a year, over a year during which they existed in a state of legal uncertainty, often without direct contact with the professional nominally appointed to represent their interests.

The resourcing picture matters here. The MoJ Harm Panel documented that resource constraints meant that maximising time spent with children, identified as essential to developing the relationships of trust necessary for genuine participation, was precisely what professionals did not have. The consultation that did take place was usually brief. Children were rarely consulted once an order had been made. And the gap between the professional's assessment and the child's actual view was rarely revisited.

What children say when anyone actually asks them

The Dimopoulos study interviewed 41 children across Queensland, Victoria, and New South Wales about their experiences of participation in Australian family law proceedings. The study's methodology applied Lundy's four-element framework, space, voice, audience and influence to children's accounts of what had actually happened.

The findings are uncomfortable reading for anyone who believes that the best interests of the child is more than a legal formulation.

Children consistently described being spoken about rather than spoken to. They described feeling like their role was to provide information that professionals would then interpret and convey, rather than to be heard directly. Lisa said she wanted to be able to speak and say what she wanted, instead of having others say what she wanted, which was not what she wanted.

Children described what they called Chinese whispers, the transformation of their original words into what was ultimately conveyed to the decision-maker. Paige felt somewhat responsible for her views being changed: she blamed herself for not making her words come across right to the person who told the judge.

Children described being explicitly told that their views did not carry decisive weight by virtue of their status as children. Ava was told by a counsellor: you're still a kid, it's between mum and dad. That's what annoys me, Ava said, cause it's like my life. It's about me.

Some children described not knowing an Independent Children's Lawyer had been appointed on their behalf until told by a parent, and then discovering that the ICL had never spoken to them and was not required to. Gabrielle reflected with incredulity: I remember Mum saying, oh yeah you have an independent children's lawyer, and I'm like, so shouldn't I be talking to them? And she's like, no, they just make decisions on your behalf, they don't talk to you. And I'm like, that does not make sense to me.

What selective listening looks like

The MoJ Harm Panel named the mechanism precisely: selective listening. Children who wish to have contact with the non-resident parent are heard. Children who do not wish to have contact are not heard, or are pressured to change their minds.

The Dimopoulos data confirms this from the children's side. Nine of the 41 children described intentional non-compliance with parenting orders, not because they were difficult, but because they had not been listened to and had concluded that the only way to exercise any influence over their lives was to act unilaterally. As Ava put it: if they can't listen to me, I'm not going to listen to them.

Leo's reflection on the impact of not knowing what was happening throughout proceedings is worth quoting in full, because it captures something the legal framework consistently misses: the years after the divorce were more traumatising than the actual divorce, because I didn't know anything. I was playing the guessing game.

What genuine participation would require

Lundy's framework is clear on this. Children need space that is safe and inclusive. They need their voice to be enabled, not filtered through third parties who may distort or interpret it. They need an audience that is genuinely receptive, not one conducting a tick-box exercise. And they need influence: the assurance that what they say will shape the outcome, or that they will be told honestly why it did not.

The Dimopoulos study documents what happens when these conditions are not met. Children feel devalued, invisible, and excluded from the decisions that shape their lives. They lose trust in the professionals appointed to serve their interests. And they carry the weight of that experience, the regret, the responsibility, the sense that their failure to be heard was somehow their own fault, long after the proceedings have concluded.

Troy said: talk to us, not about us.

He was fourteen years old. He had watched adults conduct proceedings about his life without speaking to him directly. And what he wanted was the most straightforward thing imaginable: to be treated as a person rather than a subject.

The law says he has that right. The evidence says he did not receive it.

Source references

Lundy, L. (2007) 'Voice is not enough: conceptualising Article 12 of the UNCRC.' British Educational Research Journal, 33:6, 927–942.

Dimopoulos, G., Hew, E., Vosz, M., Walsh, H. (2025) 'Talk to Us, Not About Us: Children's Understandings and Experiences of Participation in Australian Family Law.' Child and Family Social Work. doi: 10.1111/cfs.13275.

Cafcass (2023) Annual Report and Accounts 2022–23. Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service.

Ministry of Justice Expert Panel (2020) Assessing Risk of Harm to Children and Parents in Private Law Children Cases. Final Report, June 2020.