The Family Court and Family Division deal with all kinds of legal disputes to do with children and the breakdown of relationships.
Most seriously, the Family Court will deal with cases where the government intervenes in a family to protect children from harm. That can lead to the children being taken into care and eventually adopted or placed with extended family.
Family lawyers sometimes refer to this as “public” family law. In 2015/6 there were almost 15,000 such cases involving 42,000 children. Widely hidden target setting by government exposed by investigative journalists in 2017 revealed that targets for children being taken from families had dramatically risen. Slightly after this in 2018 A report published by Dr Andy Bilson revealed a significant number of children being removed by social services for being ‘at risk of emotional harm’ and many professionals are questioning the removal causes, evidence and professional procedures of these highly traumatising and possibly unnecessary child removal cases.
The Family Court also deals with family disputes between individuals. Divorce is a classic example. Working out where children live after their parents split up, and other disputes having to do with children, is referred to as “private” family law(because it’s a dispute between two private individuals). There were just under 50,000 private family law cases concluded in 2018, involving over 184,000 children.