DCA Family Justice Division Forum
URL
CASE STUDY OWNER
Department for Constitutional Affairs (now the Ministry of Justice)
LESSONS LEARNT
Strengths:
- The forum engaged people who had experience of family courts;
- Discussion remained open, even when contentious views were being put forward;
- The consultation report made specific references to the online deliberations;
- Participants were informed when the consultation report was published.
Potential for improvement:
- The forum would have benefited from better planning and consistency of moderation;
- Staff and resource allocation were insufficient to support the forum;
- Consultation team could have recruited experts and opinion leaders to participate and facilitate discussion;
- Regular feedback to participants via summaries should have been more regular and consistent;
- More background information for participants and clearer guidance about policy process could have been provided to orientate users.
OVERVIEW
The Department for Constitutional Affairs was responsible in government for upholding justice, rights and democracy. Its stated objectives were to:
- Provide effective and accessible justice for all;
- Ensure people’s rights and responsibilities;
- Enhance democratic freedoms by modernising the law and the constitution.
Her Majesty’s Courts Service (HMCS) was an executive agency of the DCA. Its purpose was to deliver the administration of the civil, family and criminal courts in England and Wales.
The Family Justice division of the DCA covered the national policy on family law.
POLICY PURPOSE
The forum was set up as part of the DCA’s consultation on proposed changes to the workings of the family courts. These aimed to:
- Improve confidence in the family courts through public scrutiny;
- Improve public understanding of court decisions;
- Protect the privacy of those in court;
- Provide rigorous enforcements of sanctions where privacy is breached;
- Make simple, easily understood, consistent and workable arrangements.
Discussion topics in the forum were set out by the policy team; they were:
- Attendance of MPs, Lead Members and Inspectors in court;
- Adoption Cases;
- Media Attendance;
- Providing Information to Children;
- Protecting Privacy;
- Practical Considerations.
MODEL
Online deliberative forum.
Discussion was structured around topics that related to the consultation. Pre-moderation was carried out by the consultation team who logged on to the forum to post follow-up questions and address issues raised by participants.
The forum was readable by anyone, but registration was required to contribute. The intended core user-group was court users from England and Wales.
DURATION
The forum ran from July 11 to October 30, 2006
PUBLICITY
The forum was advertised on the DCA and Family Courts websites and via stakeholder meetings.
Press releases were sent out by the DCA and Family Justice division to trade and mainstream press.
There was no paid-for marketing.
OTHER METHODS
People were invited to attend meetings or provide written submissions (via letter or email) to the consultation team.
USER PROFILES
170 registrants: 42% were male; 52% were female, 6% did not specify a gender.
The majority of registrants classed themselves as frequent users of the internet (which they accessed from home) and discovered the forum through existing online communities that they were part of.
In responses (n=35) to the pre-consultation survey, 80% said that they had not been involved in online policy deliberations previously. Seventy one per cent had been in contact with their MP, but only 11% had given evidence to a parliamentary inquiry, and less than a third had taken part in previous government consultations.
For the majority of the respondents (68%), participation in the forum was the only means by which they contributed to the consultation: 8% did not say whether they contributed by other means. Four per cent said that they filled in a survey; 8% wrote a letter and 12% took part in a discussion on another website.
USAGE TRENDS
A total 210 comments were posted – 172 by participants, 38 by moderators.
Registrations were sustained throughout the consultation period. The number of participants tailed-off towards the end of September, but people continued to visit the forum even after the consultation ended.
USER FEEDBACK
Respondents to the post-evaluation survey (n=26) were positive about online consultations in general, but ambivalent about the experience of using this specific Family Courts forum.
User feedback responses are represented as percentages below:
While some participants were hoping to influence policy, others believed they could learn from other contributors. Participants were also motivated by a desire to air grievances that they felt they were unable to express by another means.
In the event, a large proportion said that they appreciated other people’s posts but that they did not learn anything about the policy area or were dissatisfied with interventions by the policy team. Despite this, the majority (over 70%) said that they would take part in future online deliberations and that they would recommend them to others.
Participants noted that opinions got published – even when they were not favourable towards the current system and the government. They recognised that most of the dialogue was taking place between users:
DETAILED FEEDBACK
This forum was open to the general public, but did have in mind a core participant base of family courts users. The forum was successful in attracting registration from these users, and encouraging participation by individuals who had little previous experience of the policy process.
It is important – particularly where the subject focus of deliberation is emotive – that moderation is consistent and visible. Due, in the main to a lack of experience and staff availability, moderation in this forum was irregular. Contentious viewpoints were expressed by participants but the moderators were not confident in dealing with these and their reluctance to engage with users led some discussions to become skewed or important threads and questions being left unattended.
The task of moderation could have been made less onerous through the provision of a range of background information resources to orientate participation. The consultation team may have also considered the value of recruiting expert stakeholders to participate in the forum and respond to discussions that were otherwise felt to be inappropriate for policy officials to intervene in. Fundamentally, the more facts and figures are used to support deliberation, the more open and inclusive deliberation tends to be.
Some registrants were interested in the prospect of the forum but chose not to participate in the event. These users showed a general enthusiasm for online participation routes and could have been offered other online means of contributing – for example, surveys or closed areas where they could have engaged with policy officials.
Users of online engagement tools often complain that they are given little guidance on how their contributions have been used in the policy process. Although not entirely clear, the policy team in this case study did go to lengths not only to include participant submissions in their consultation response document, but also to inform forum users of the availability of their response paper.
FOLLOW UP
The Family Courts Division published a consultation response document on March 22, 2007. The document summarises responses to the consultation; it also includes discussions of views expressed at stakeholder events and in the online discussion forum for adults, children and young people.
