" Family justice is rightly in the public spotlight and the reasons for anxious scrutiny, whether from the media, in the political process or by academic and practitioner analysis ought to cause us to examine with care what we do, why we do it and whether we have outcomes that are at least no worse than and one would hope add value to the lives of those who are the subjects of proceedings.

In adversarial terms there are rarely win, win solutions to family problems. In family justice, the only winner should be any child of a relationship; for everyone else new concepts of the aim and purposes of justice need to be explored and described if we are to minimise both the damaging consequences of emotional disruption or relationship breakdown and the harm that is often caused by the delay in subsequent decision making"¦"