There are few things as reliably theatrical as private law children proceedings. For years, the family courts have hosted a peculiar kind of courtroom drama: high emotion, low information, and a procedural rhythm that often seemed designed to ensure everyone left more entrenched than when they arrived. Enter the Private Law Pathfinder model, now rebranded with the far more marketable title of the Child Focused Model, which promises with surprising audacity to make the Family court system work.
The model is a fundamental redesign of how private law children cases are handled (e.g. disputes about where a child lives or contact with parents). It replaces the traditional adversarial, parent-driven process with a child-centred, investigative approach. It was initially piloted in Dorset and parts of Wales and is now being rolled out nationwide. Marking one of the most significant recent reforms to family justice in England and Wales.
At its heart, Pathfinder asks a question so obvious it’s almost subversive: what if we gathered the important information before the hearing, rather than discovering it piecemeal over the course of several months (and several thousand pounds)? What if, instead of staging a slow-burn adversarial saga, we tried to understand the child’s situation at the outset and made decisions accordingly? Radical stuff.
The traditional model has often resembled turning up to an exam having forgotten both the subject and the pen. Allegations emerge late, safeguarding concerns are only partially explored, and the court is left trying to assemble a coherent picture from fragments, all while the clock ticks and tensions rise.
Pathfinder flips this. The Child Impact Report arrives early, Cafcass does the legwork upfront, and the court is handed something approaching a complete narrative before it makes any meaningful decisions. It’s less “wait and see” and more “look and understand.”
One might reasonably ask: why didn’t we do this before?
Another quiet revolution lies in what Pathfinder removes. Fewer hearings. Fewer procedural skirmishes. Fewer opportunities for matters to drift into the legal equivalent of trench warfare.
This is not, as some might fear, a dilution of due process. By focusing on early, high-quality information, the model allows hearings to become what they were always meant to be: decision-making forums, not fact-finding expeditions conducted in instalments.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the Child Focused Model is that it appears to have located the child.
For a system ostensibly built around welfare, it has historically been remarkably adept at centring adult conflict instead. Pathfinder attempts to rebalance that equation by ensuring that the child’s voice, experience, and needs are identified early and treated as central, not incidental.
One of the more serious criticisms of the old system, amply documented in the Harm Panel report, was its handling of domestic abuse. Concerns were too often identified late, explored inconsistently, or overshadowed by procedural inertia. Pathfinder’s insistence on early risk identification is therefore more than administrative tidiness; it is a structural response to a systemic problem. By integrating safeguarding into the opening phase of the case, it reduces the likelihood that serious issues are side-lined or minimised.
The reported outcomes from the pilot areas are faster resolution, fewer hearings, reduced returns to court. Speed, in this context, is not about rushing decisions. It is about removing the unnecessary delay that serves no one, least of all the child. A case resolved in seven months instead of fourteen is not just a bureaucratic win, it is seven fewer months of uncertainty for a family already under strain.
Of course, the real challenge is not procedural but cultural. Pathfinder requires judges, practitioners, and parties alike to embrace a less adversarial, more inquisitorial mindset. It asks lawyers to resist the gravitational pull of point-scoring and instead engage with early evidence in a constructive way.
This may take some getting used to. But if the alternative is a system that incentivises escalation and rewards endurance over resolution, it is a shift worth making.
So… is it a silver bullet? No reform ever is. Pathfinder will face the usual practical constraints: resources, consistency of implementation, and the small matter of human behaviour. There will be teething problems. There will be sceptics. There will, inevitably, be cases where it does not deliver the hoped-for results.
But it represents a serious, evidence-based attempt to fix problems that have been acknowledged for years. By prioritising early information, child welfare, and meaningful decision-making, Pathfinder offers something that has occasionally felt in short supply: cautious optimism.
It may not eliminate conflict (this is family law after all), but it might just stop the system from making it worse. And in this field, that’s no small achievement.
Heather Reilly
31/03/26