Family judge should listen better to parents, report on performance ‘does ouch’ | Interior

Judges must allocate more time to parents during court cases. That is one of the most important conclusions of family judges, who themselves have looked at how they do their work. But it is difficult to allocate more time because there is a shortage of family judges. The fact that youth care is also facing major problems only complicates the problems even more.

And that is painful, because in juvenile law it has to be good and fast. Children who get into trouble at home, for example because their parents cannot take care of them (properly), benefit from quick help. This cannot offer the youth care services plagued by waiting lists. But judges also fail to hear enough parents, according to interviews of the judiciary with parents, lawyers and other parties involved.

And if parents disagree with a decision, an appeal is much too long in coming. It takes three months before an objection to, for example, a custodial placement is dealt with. That should be done in four weeks. In addition, families should not always have to deal with a different judge. And expert investigations in cases need to be done much more quickly – now this is often neglected because it takes far too long to carry out such an investigation. Judges then act without input from experts who look into a case, because in cases about custodial placements, for example, it is always necessary to act quickly.

In recent months, family judges have looked at their own performance, following the example of administrative judges, because of the benefits affair. Those administrative judges judged harshly about their own performance: they had done too little to protect citizens against hard claims from the Tax and Customs Administration, which turned out to have unjustly reclaimed large amounts and thus plunged families into major financial problems. Children of those families have also been placed out of home: Statistics Netherlands calculated that this concerns a total of 2090 children. Substantive dossiers were not examined – this will be done later in the case of out-of-home placements of benefit parents.

The criticism of parents, who feel they are not being heard enough, touches the heart of the judiciary. After all, trust in the judiciary is essential for its functioning, emphasizes Henk Naves, chairman of the Council for the Judiciary. “This report hurts,” he says. But the most important bottlenecks are also not so easy to solve, he emphasizes. “The judiciary squeaks and creaks. Judges run panting from session to session. If we strengthen family law, we have to move manpower elsewhere. The problems are not solved overnight.” Even if it should, Naves also says. “It is about children, the future of our country. That is also why judges, despite the great pressure, do everything they can to still perform more than satisfactorily. But justice is the work of people: that will not always work, sometimes the performance will be below par.”

The report emphasizes that judges should be ‘active and curious’. With more room for parents during court proceedings, but also understandable language in their decisions, in which they motivate their decisions. They can also more often choose to have their decisions apply for a shorter period of time. An custodial placement is then not granted for a year, but for three months. This makes it possible to check whether sufficient help has been provided to a family in the meantime. Juvenile judges should also discuss their role and task more often. The report also calls on family judges to actively investigate relevant facts more often, for example by requesting additional information prior to a court case. That is not an unnecessary luxury: research by the Health and Youth Care Inspectorate recently showed how no report from youth care was in order in 45 custodial placement cases.

Naves emphasizes that the criticism of parents, but also lawyers and children, touches on the essence of the judiciary, namely trust in it. Parents are insufficiently heard during court cases.