Jill Goldson says the benefits to the community would far outweigh the cost of a plan that the Government is dragging its feet on.
Last month, New Zealand's excellent reputation as a significant architect of enlightened child law practice was raised in Australia as an example of how they should proceed.
While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, our pride in this emulation must be tempered by our ironic inability to follow our
own best practice.
This practice of family participation in New Zealand, called Family Group conferences, originated with the Children, Young Persons and their Families (CYPF) Act 1987.
Recently, an Australian Law Reform Commission appointed a committee to look into the New Zealand model. This feature of child protection, used widely in New Zealand, is a hallmark of participatory practice and has been adopted internationally. It is used in laws involving children - namely child protection, youth justice and family law.
The enigma lies in the fact that in New Zealand we cannot use our own model of practice in family law.
Although the provision to include children in counselling with their parents was passed into New Zealand family law in 2008, with the Family Court Matters Bill, Government says there is no money in the budget to roll out this much-awaited reform.
"Borrowing heavily from New Zealand's highly regarded use of this reform," said Paul McDonald of the Age, referring to our Family Group Conferences, "done early and done right, the involvement of family and professional workers would create good outcomes for children who are on the precipice of the court system."
In the likely event that Victorian state legislation adopts this provision of family group conferencing, New Zealand will have led the way - for Britain, Canada and now Australia - in laws which involve children.
Why would we not involve children in parental dispute resolution about their every day care arrangements? Long recognised as an empirically tested paradigm, careful practice yields significant and overwhelmingly positive outcomes for families and children undergoing separation.
Not only do parents reach agreements about their children far more rapidly but the level of conflict reduces dramatically, and children become less symptomatic and more resilient.
The mental health of the entire rearranged family is enhanced. Rates of uptake of legal processes, which are inherently polarising and expensive, are reduced.
Professionals in the Family Court endorse the introduction of including children in counselling. Judges, counsellors, lawyers, psychologists and social workers have recognised the need to replace adversarial practice with one which understands the rationale for rearranged families to collaborate in finding solutions to their disputes .
This amendment is now part of the Care of Children Act (2004) and has the potential to deliver rapid resolution to the damaging impasse experienced by distressed families.
Yet, despite all of its proven potential, this provision continues to languish on the statutes.
Professionals trained in an application of child inclusion in dispute resolution know this reform does not need to cost more than the current counselling budget for working with adults (parents, step parents and grandparents) in separated families.
Given the Government's concern about budgetary constraints, it is incongruous that no thought is given to the substantial savings to legal aid and Treasury which would occur if families no longer required more complex legal processes.
A committee under Sir Peter Gluckman, chief science adviser to the Prime Minister, is working on submissions about programmes that work towards supporting the resilience of adolescents in our communities.
Given that the Government rightly endorses research into programmes which foster this resilience, it becomes even more paradoxical that this provision remains unacted upon.
The role of inter-parental conflict in the history of disturbed adolescent behaviour is well documented in the research literature. Families splinter and this is compounded by processes that do not see families as entities needing a collaborative and integrative approach.
Child and adolescent voices do not benefit from being muted. By the time they are heard in court, the psychological polarisation and fracturing experienced by the family is usually beyond repair.
The outcomes for children in such cases are predictably poor, and result in symptomatic behaviour ranging from depression and anxiety through to substance abuse and truanting.
A reduction in the behaviour of distressed young people is obviously of huge benefit to the community. This enhanced resilience is proven empirically by including children in counselling in family law.
Sobering research data, on the other hand, has found that one in four children living in a situation of unresolved parental conflict go on to develop a formal psychiatric disorder.
Will this reform, which has at last allowed children to be part of a therapeutic family law dispute resolution process, ever see the light of day? Or will the wheel be reinvented once again?
Replication of an existing provision is yet another cost to the taxpayer, along with the immense price of ongoing delay to families urgently needing this intervention.
Separation need not be stigmatised, yet rather needs to be understood and navigated - by all family members.
Why is it that no heed is paid to the families themselves, who are asking for this particular resource to support their young, and themselves, at a traumatic time of change? The delay in rolling out this model in family law dispute resolution is ill-considered and, as such, unjust.
Jill Goldson is director of the Family Matters Centre, which specialises in counselling the "rearranged family".
