Dr. Kenneth Burns:

The message that is coming from some of the contributors is that we need to look at this in the round. What happened in England and Wales is that the authorities wanted to reduce the average wait from 52 weeks to a maximum of 26 but it was also part of the introduction of a pre-proceedings process. The aim of that process was to take some of the discussions out of the court setting. What they found was that they managed to reduce the wait in about 60% of cases and to reach decisions in a timely fashion, which is what Dr. Shannon was talking about. However, the unintended consequence was that some of the orders that were given were different from what was expected. The point is that when we consider changes, we can learn from other jurisdictions in terms of what they have done. Other jurisdictions have made fairly fundamental changes from which we can learn. Furthermore, evidence is starting to emerge that unintended and unexpected consequences can arise from those changes. In England and Wales, they did something that had unexpected and unintended results. There was a reduction in the number of care orders and some of the cases ended up in special guardianship orders, for example, but that was not what was intended. One of the key messages in terms of timelines, which should be up for discussion, is the number of judges available. As FLAC pointed out, the number of available judges needs to be higher. There is no point setting deadlines without dealing with the availability of judges.

The broader question about guidelines is that if they provide that a decision must be made within X amount of time, they cannot be so rigid that exceptional cases, particularly adoption cases and other contested cases, are squeezed into an artificial deadline. It is nice to have benchmark and it is good to aim for that benchmark but it should not be an absolute. That is the main lesson from England and Wales.