The deadline for submission to the International Call for Evidence has now closed.
This is an international call for evidence regarding the use of research in family justice systems.
To better understand the current use of research in family justice systems, the Nuffield Foundation has commissioned a research team to complete a scoping study, which will inform the development of a proposed new family justice observatory for England and Wales.
While the scoping study focuses on England and Wales, any observatory that is subsequently commissioned is expected to have a broader, more international reach and to learn from good practice in a range of international jurisdictions.
We invite submissions from policy, practice and research leads on behalf of organisations outside of England and Wales representing one or more of the following stakeholder groups within the family justice system:
- Practitioners (e.g. judges, lawyers, barristers, experts, social workers).
- System-wide users (e.g. policy makers).
- Researchers and analysts (e.g. academic, government, independent).
- Parties to cases (e.g. young people, parents, extended family members, other carers).
This international call for evidence follows a national call to practitioners, policy-makers and researchers across organisations in England and Wales. Respondents to the national call highlighted the following issues as problematic for them and therefore something they would want the proposed family justice observatory to address:
- Access to research
- Trust in research
- Knowledge exchange between researchers, policy-makers and practitioners
- Use of administrative data sets for both national and regional analyses
- Paucity of research relevant to private law
We ask you to consider (i) whether these issues are common to your own countries or jurisdictions and (ii) what kinds of solutions or practices have been introduced to address these issues? We also ask you to list what you consider to be the priority topics for new research in your own jurisdictions (e.g. child contact in public and private law cases).
Background and guidance
For further background information and guidance regarding responses to the call, please see our Background and Guidance document.
Submitting a response
In order to submit a response:
- Download our Submission Template to an appropriate place on your computer.
- We would encourage internal consultation within your organisation to inform the submissions.
- Enter your responses into the text boxes within the template.
- Once complete, send it via email with the subject “International Call for Evidence Response” to: observatory.scoping.study@lancaster.ac.uk
Publication of responses
Where respondents agree to publication of their responses (anonymous or otherwise), these will be published on this project website later in the year.
Any questions?
In the first instance see our FAQ otherwise email us at: observatory.scoping.study@lancaster.ac.uk
National (England and Wales) call for evidence
If you are an individual or organisation in England and Wales, please see here for our previous national call for evidence.