Children and the law: Pathfinder pilot for child arrangements

Starting a case

This section explains how you can start an application at a Pathfinder court. If you have already sent your application to the court and it is being processed then go to What happens after the application is issued.

If someone else has started an application go to You have received an application from the Family Court.

Before applying to court

Before you apply to the court for an order, you may need to attend a mediation information and assessment meeting (MIAM). Where negotiation and agreement with your child’s other parent is realistic and appropriate, trying to do this through mediation may be the right option for you. Our guide to making family arrangements without going to court explains what other options there may be.

A MIAM is a meeting you have on your own with a mediator to discuss what mediation is and whether it is suitable in your case. Everyone who makes an application to the family court must attend a MIAM unless they are exempt.

Exemptions to attending a MIAM are set out in the application form but include:

• If you are a victim of domestic abuse
• If your child is at risk of harm from their other parent
• If it is not physically possible to mediate, for example, because the other parent is in prison
• If you need to make an urgent application.

If you do not have an exemption, you must attend a MIAM before you can make an application to the court.

How to make an application to the Family Court

The application procedure can be complicated and we recommend you seek legal advice from a solicitor or our advice line if possible.

To start a new application you need to:

• Complete form C100 or C79

A form C100 is used to apply for a child arrangements order, specific issue order, prohibited steps order or variation of those orders. To understand what these orders are see Children and the law: when parents separate. A form C79 is used to apply for enforcement of those orders. You can apply online here. Or you can get paper forms from your local court or download the forms from the Gov.uk website here.

• Tell the court if you or your child are at risk of harm

If you or your child have suffered or at risk of suffering harm from the other parent, you should tell the court about this. You may be worried about domestic abuse, child abuse, abduction, drug or alcohol abuse or other behaviour that is harmful.

If you apply online, the system will ask you these questions as you are going through. This is important as it is the first opportunity you have to tell the court why you are worried about your child. You can summarise what you are worried about but write that this is a summary and you would like to provide further details later. Try to include dates if possible. The other parent will see the application and be given an opportunity to respond.

If you are using paper forms, you can give this information using form C1A.

• Pay the court fee or apply for an exemption

Every application has a court fee. You can find out how much the court fee is here.

If you cannot afford the fee, you can ask the court to waive the fee, or reduce it, depending on your situation. If you are applying online, you can complete the online form here. You will be given a reference to use in your application.

If you are applying using paper forms, you will need to complete form EX160 and send it to the court with your other papers.

• Sending your application

If you apply online, the system will send your application to the court.

If you are applying using paper forms, you should send the forms to your nearest family court. You will need to send enough copies for yourself, the court, Cafcass, the other party and anyone else with parental responsibility. You can find the full list of courts and information about what type of work they do here.

The court will issue your application and give you a court reference number. The court will send copies of your application to the other parties in the case and to Cafcass or Cafcass Cymru.

You will be referred to as the applicant in the case. The other party will be referred to as the respondent.

Keeping your address and contact details safe from the other party

If you feel that you or your children will be at risk of harm if the other parent  has your contact details then you do not need to put this information on the forms, but you will need to provide your contact details to the court.

If you are applying online, you will asked about whether you want to keep your contact details confidential. You can tick this box.

If you are applying using paper forms, you will need to complete form C8 and send it to the court with your application. Remember not to put your contact details on the other forms, as these will be sent to the other party in the case. The court should not send the C8 or reveal your contact details to the other party.

You have received an application from the Family Court

If you receive an application from the court in relation to your child, you are the respondent in the proceedings.

The court should send you a blank form called a C7 which you can complete and return to the court not less than 10 days before the hearing. If you are concerned that there is a risk of harm to your child that the court should know about, you can also complete form C1A and return this to the Court at the same time as you send them the form C7.

If the applicant has applied online, you may receive an email and a letter about this. They should provide you with information about how to respond to the application.

What happens after the application is issued

You will be sent a copy of the issued application.

If you do not have a lawyer, you will be contacted by the Case Progression Officer at the court. If you have a solicitor, information about the process will be sent to them and your solicitor should explain the process to you.

The purpose of the phone call from the Case Progression Officer is to explain what is going to happen. If you are unsure, you can ask them any questions you have about the process. They are not able to make any decisions about your case, they are there to explain what is happening.

The Case Progression Officer may also ask you about any information in your application that is not filled in correctly or where they are unsure about information provided.

The court will send all of the papers to Cafcass, or Cafcass Cymru if the children live in Wales.

If your case is returning to court after a previous order, the court will try to keep your case with the same judge who decided it before unless they are not available.

What if my case is urgent?

If you have made an urgent application and need the court to make quick decisions about a specific problem, then the court will hear your urgent application and make any necessary orders. This could be, for example, you are worried that the other parent of your child might be about to abduct them.

The case will then continue through the rest of the Pathfinder stages like every other case.

Child Impact Report stage

After the application has been issued Cafcass, Cafcass Cymru or the local authority will be in contact with you to prepare a Child Impact Report. If the local authority is already involved with your family, it is likely it will be the local authority that will be in contact with you. If the local authority is not involved with your family, or hasn’t been for a long time, it is likely Cafcass or Cafcass Cymru will be in contact with you.

For more information about Cafcass and Cafcass Cymru, see our guide to Cafcass and section 7 reports.

The person writing the report will also speak to you and your child’s other parent. They will contact you by phone, email or letter, depending on what details they have for you. If you have not heard from them within a couple of weeks of the application being made, you can contact the Case Progression Officer at the court.

Depending on the age of your child, the person writing the report will arrange to speak to them. They will want to talk to your child without a parent present.

The person writing the report will run checks with the police and children’s services to see if they have any information about you or your family.

They may also speak to other professionals involved in you and your child’s life such as GP, teacher, social worker, probation officer, domestic abuse support workers and any other people that would have relevant information.

The purpose of the Child Impact Report is for the court to understand what is going on for your child, what your child wants and needs, why you are in court proceedings and if there are any risks to you or your child.

If needed, the person writing the report will communicate with the judge about what the Child Impact Report has to cover. They can communicate in writing or they can talk to each other at a hearing. You will not attend this hearing. The court will keep a record of what is discussed. The court will decide whether to share any of those communications with you and the other party.

If the person writing the Child Impact Report believes you may be at risk of domestic abuse, or you raise domestic abuse with them, they will suggest that a risk assessment is done by a domestic abuse support service. Each area in the pilot has a domestic abuse service that will do these assessments for the Child Impact Report. You can get in contact with the domestic abuse service, or tell the person writing the report that this is what you would like, if you have experienced domestic abuse.

If you are put in touch with a domestic abuse service, they will carry out a risk assessment.  This is a tool to help understand the level of risk of harm to you or the children. The domestic abuse service will give the risk assessment to the person writing the Child Impact Report.

The person writing the Child Impact Report will include information from the risk assessment in the Child Impact Report. This means that anything you say to the domestic abuse service could be sent to the other party as part of the Child Impact Report. The person from the domestic abuse service doing the risk assessment will discuss this with you.  If you have concerns about this then you can raise them with the domestic abuse service.

It is likely the domestic abuse service will also offer you support through the case. Lots of victims of domestic abuse find this support helpful. You do not have to continue to receive support from the domestic abuse service if you do not want this. You can check with the domestic abuse service what types of support they offer.

The Child Impact Report will make recommendations for what type of order they believe best meets your child’s needs or what steps the court may need to take to decide this.

They may make arrangements for you or the other parent of your child to attend a course for separated parents or other support that they believe will be helpful.

You and the other parent in the case will usually be sent a copy of the Child Impact Report. The court may decide not to share the report or to only share part of a report if there are safeguarding concerns such as a risk of harm to a child or to a party.

After the Child Impact Report is received by the court

Once the Child Impact Report has been received the court, a decision will be made about how senior a judge is required to hear your case. Once a judge has been allocated to deal with your case, that judge will decide what the next steps should be. The judge will consider:

• What issues are agreed and what are the key issues to be decided.
• Is there a need for a fact-finding hearing and, if so, what steps need to be taken to make sure the case is ready and when it should happen. If a fact-finding hearing does take place, the court will need to then consider whether there is additional information to be included in the Child Impact Report. See A guide to fact finding hearings for more information.
• Are any orders being asked for or could be made to restrict a party’s ability to make applications for child arrangement and other orders?
• Do other agencies need to be involved to decide what orders should be made?
• Can any interim orders be made, for example for contact in a contact centre, or contact by letter or card or Facetime? An interim order is a temporary order until final decisions are made.
• Are there other directions that the court needs to make so the case is ready for a decision hearing?
• Should the case be given a date straight away for a decision hearing?
• Does the child need to be asked further questions so the court knows their preferences and wishes and feelings?
• Is input or more input required from an Independent Domestic Violence Advisor or domestic abuse support worker?

Decisions stage

After all the information has been gathered, the next stage is for the court to decide what should happen next and how to progress to a final decision. The decisions the court makes can involve different things, depending on your case:

• Directing one or both of you to engage in an activity that would help to establish, maintain or improve your involvement in the child’s life. An example of this is a domestic abuse perpetrator programme.
• Recommending you and the other parent try some form of non-court dispute resolution, for example mediation, to be able to reach a decision between you or to agree some issues.
• Consider how to monitor and review any agreement made between you and the other parent.
• Consider whether it is appropriate to make a consent order if you and the other parent reach any agreement about what the arrangements should be for your child. Even if you and the other parent agree about what the arrangements should be the court will carefully consider what you have agreed, and whether it is in your child’s best interests.
• Hold a decision hearing.

The court will write to you and the other parent to let you know what is happening, and what you need to do next. The court will also tell you the dates and times of any court hearing.

Allegations of harm and domestic abuse

In child arrangements cases where domestic abuse is raised the court will consider whether or not the abuse or harm affects the decision that the court has to make.

If you have alleged that the other party has been abusive towards you or the children and the other party denies the allegations, the court may hold a finding of fact hearing. This is a hearing when the judge will look at all of the evidence and decide whether the alleged abuse is more likely to have happened than not.

There are particular rules which apply in cases about children where domestic abuse has been alleged. These rules are called Practice Direction 12J. For more detail you can read our guide Children and the Law: Domestic Violence and Practice Direction 12J.

If the judge has directed that the finding of fact hearing is necessary, they will give directions to you and the other party which you must comply with. For example, they may ask you to prepare a statement and a schedule of the allegations. If, for any reason, you are not able to comply with the directions in the time given, you should write to the court and inform them of this.

See A guide to fact finding hearings for more information, including information on schedules.

If the court decides that the other party has been abusive towards you or the children then the final decision on child arrangements will have to take into account the risks of harm from that abuse.

The court’s order should also take into account other issues, for example, whether the abuser should do any work to reduce risk, for example any type of domestic abuse programme, and how the children have been affected by the abuser’s behaviour.

Decision hearing

At a decision hearing the court has to investigate the issues and make decisions on any issues that are not agreed. You and the other party will be required to attend the hearing unless there are special reasons for not doing so. The court may give permission to attend the hearing online or remotely if a request is made before the hearing and the judge agrees there are exceptional reasons for not attending. The judge could agree to special measures such as separate entrances or waiting rooms and screens in the court room were there have been allegations of domestic abuse.

If you have someone supporting you from a specialist domestic abuse service they can attend hearings with you. You should tell the judge who is attending as soon as possible. The person supporting you will need to tell the judge their name, details of the organisation they work for and confirm they understand the rules about children cases being confidential.

The court may also ask Cafcass / Cafcass Cymru or the local authority to attend this hearing.

The court will encourage you and the other parent to focus on the interests of your child. The court may speak to you directly and ask you questions and for your views and thoughts on the issues. The court may ask you questions directly even if you have a lawyer attending court with you.

To help the court make decisions where you and the other parent cannot agree, a decision hearing could include you and the other parent telling the judge what has happened or what you think the arrangements should be for your child, and being asked questions about that by the other parent, or by their lawyer, or the judge.

There are rules about how to protect people who have experienced domestic abuse as you go through the court process, including rules about hearings and being asked questions. If you have experienced domestic abuse you will not be allowed to ask questions of the other parent yourself, and they will not be allowed to ask you questions directly.

You can get full information about these rules and how they can help you in our guides: Special measures in the family court and Cross-examination of survivors and perpetrators of domestic abuse in the family court

At the decision hearing the court will decide what orders to make and can also decide whether to make an order preventing someone from making further applications for orders about the children without first getting the permission of the court.

The court will also decide how any decisions it makes should be communicated to the child.

Can I appeal the court’s decision?

The court’s decision is usually final. In certain circumstances you may be able to appeal the court’s decision. You can only appeal in very limited circumstances, for example if the judge made a very serious mistake or because the judge did not follow the proper legal procedure. It is more difficult to appeal an order that you agreed to, called a consent order.

If you intend to appeal a decision of the family court you must do so within 21 days of the decision (unless the judge who gave the decision provided a different time limit).

You need the court’s permission to appeal. You can request permission from the judge who made the decision.

If you didn’t ask for permission, or if the judge who made the decision refused to give you permission to appeal, then you can ask permission from the court that you are appealing to. Appeals can be costly and complicated and you should seek legal advice from a solicitor or a barrister.

See How to appeal family court decisions for more information.

Can the court change orders it has made previously?

Sometimes circumstances change after the court has made a final decision. For example, the arrangements in a Child Arrangements Order may no longer work as the other parent  has moved away, or the other parent may not be collecting the child when they are supposed to.

If circumstances change you can apply to the court to change the order. This is called an application to vary.  The same procedure applies to this application, so you will need to follow the procedure set out above.

Enforcement of court order

If an order is not being followed, it is possible to apply to the court for it to be enforced. If either you or the other parent ask the court to enforce an order the same steps set out above are likely to be followed by the court.

If possible the court will allocate your case to the same judge who dealt with your case originally.

There are particular things that will be included in the evidence before the court in the information gathering stage when a court is dealing with an application to enforce. These include whether the facts about what happened regarding not keeping to what an order says are agreed, or if the court needs to have a fact-finding hearing to decide this.

If the court finds that an order was not complied with, and there was no reasonable excuse for not complying with it, the court can make orders against the person who did not stick to the order. These orders can include unpaid work. Cafcass / Cafcass Cymru should be asked about the suitability of orders for unpaid work if the court thinks that is an option.

Using the court process appropriately

The court must consider whether an application, including a repeat application, is a sign of a party using the court process as a form of abuse against another party. If the court thinks that the court process is being used as a form of abuse, it can make an order to prevent someone starting a new application without the court’s permission. This is called a barring order or a section 91(14) order as the power to do this is contained in Section 91(14) of the Children Act 1989.

The law is complex and may have changed since this guide was produced (January 2025). This guide is designed to provide general information only for the law in England and Wales. You should seek up-to-date, independent legal advice. Rights of Women does not accept responsibility for any reliance placed on the legal information contained in this guide.