Children are the most precious people in the world.

We all want children to have happy and fulfilled lives.

But life can be hard. Many children are born into poverty.

Many children experience the separation of their parents.

And many children do not know their fathers and mothers and cousins.

That's where our family law clinic in London comes in. All our work is about children and centred on the welfare of children.

We act for mums and dads who have no money and so no access to justice or to legal advice. There is hardly any legal aid for private family law cases in UK.

And so there is a massive (actually insatiable) need for law clinics like ours.

We are a family law clinic which support clients who want to have a relationship with their children.

We care so much about our clients and that their children can have the advantage of their parents' love.

We started in Covid with one lawyer at a table waiting for drop-in clients.

We have steadily grown and now have solicitors, barristers. mediators, counsellors and students, and we are a very happy team.

We are part of the charity Dads House. We offer welcome and legal advice in a shop front on a busy London street.

We have clinics on two afternoons a week where we offer legal advice round the table.

We dispense legal advice with care and we support our clients with strategy, legal correspondence, dealing with cases through mediation, and representing them at court if needed.

We meet our clients face to face, and offer friendly service.

Our counsellors and mediators are key to our service. A lot of our clients need emotional support.

We Shepherd our clients through to successful conclusions to enable children to have full relationships with their parents.

The students who help our clients and whom we mental are a key part in our offering, and often they are closer in age to our clients than are our lawyers. Also we are a small organisation, we have had cases in the High Court, and have had reported cases, And have had cases all over the country. The Acme of our performance was winning the advocate award for the pro bono and socialist initiative of the year 2024. There is no limit to the number of family law clinics that can replicate what we do , and we offer our clinic as a model of access to Justice for children and for parents.

Family law professionals including psychologists, lawyers and judicial officers, are aware of the increasing frequency with which children resist contact with a parent after their parents separate. Two frequently opposed “camps” propose that this is the result of parental alienation or the result of domestic violence. However, many of not most of cases involving parent-child contact problems do not fit into these two categories. This workshop will present an ecological framework for parent-child contact problems that not only encompasses the possibility that either alienation or violence is at play but look more broadly at family systems variables that explain parent-child contact problems that may or may not include alienation or violence. The ecological model also proposes to take the professional “war” between the alienation and the violence advocates out of the equation, resulting in a broader and more ecological view of parent child contact problems.