News
Government must ban unregulated psychologists in the Family Court
It is a scandal that vulnerable parents and children are being exposed to dangerous practices by court 'experts' whose views lack a proper evidence-base.

In today’s publication of Goodbye mum: the ruthless fight for child custody, and reporting in The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, by Hannah Summers and Louise Tickle, the practices of ‘parental alienation’ advocates offering services as court ‘experts’ has been exposed. They should never have been allowed to provide evidence in Family Court proceedings.
Sadly, at Rights of Women we have seen how lawyers, social workers and judges can be ineffective at identifying poor practice. That is why, with domestic abuse organisations and the London Victims’ Commissioner, we drafted an amendment to the Victim and Prisoners’ Bill to try to ensure unregulated psychologists are never appointed in the Family Court.
The last Government refused to adopt this amendment and instead asked the Family Procedure Rule Committee to introduce rules. This cannot be left to procedure rules. The rules already require the courts to scrutinise the CVs of experts. If the rules were being followed, these ‘experts’ should never have been appointed in the first place.
Rights of Women’s call to the Government
We have written to the Ministry of Justice asking for legislative change. We have drafted an amendment to the Children and Families Act 2014 with two aims:
- Prohibit the appointment of an unregulated psychologist to conduct assessments of any party or child involved in proceedings
- Deem any psychological assessments conducted by an unregulated psychologist inadmissible in proceedings
The first of these prevents the court’s appointment of unregulated psychologists in ongoing proceedings. The second is aimed at cases where a ‘parental alienation’ advocate may have written a psychological assessment before proceedings began and a party may seek to rely on that assessment once proceedings have started.
There should be no discretion available to judges to rely on assessments prepared by unregulated psychologists. There can be no certainty in relation to the quality of those assessments and no redress for parents and children if things go wrong.
We also call on the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), who regulate some psychologists, to be far more robust with psychologists who produce reports for the Family Court making recommendations about child welfare that lack an evidence-base and minimise the harm caused by domestic abuse.
Write to your MP
You can support our call by writing to your MP. Ask them to press the Government for legislative change because procedure rules are not enough. ‘Parental alienation experts’ must be banned from the Family Court and and a stronger commitment to ending this poor practice through legislation could achieve this.