Decisions that separate children from their parents are among the most serious any state can make — yet in England and Wales they are made largely behind closed doors.
Family court hearings are usually held in private. Many judgments are never published. Families frequently come away without ever fully understanding why the most important decision of their lives was reached.
This matters all the more given the scale of the system.
Children's social care in England is now an enormous undertaking. Local authorities sit at the centre of it — they assess families, bring cases to court, commission the placements children are moved into, and hold the budgets that fund the wider ecosystem of services around them. When the same body holds so many roles at once, fairness depends on real transparency and genuine independent scrutiny.
What we believe
We want to be clear about something important: children are sometimes at genuine risk, and the people working in this field often face heartbreaking, impossible decisions. We do not believe every intervention is wrong, and we do not stand against child protection.
We stand for a system that is open enough to be trusted — one in which families understand what is happening to them, can challenge decisions that are wrong, and are treated with dignity throughout.
What we are asking for
- —More published, anonymised family court judgments — so that decisions are visible and can be reasoned about by the public who fund them.
- —Independent scrutiny of local authority decision-making, separate from the local authorities themselves.
- —A statutory right to clear, plain-English information for every parent at the moment they enter the system.
- —Better data on outcomes for children removed from their birth families — long-term, honest, and published.
- —Robust support for kinship carers — the family members who step forward, often overnight, and are then frequently forgotten by the system.
If this rings true to you, we'd be glad to hear from you.
Journalists, researchers, professionals working in the system, and families — all welcome. The campaign grows by people speaking honestly.
Get in touch