This page links to several short amendments which aim to improve outcomes for separating parents. They originate from Robert Garza’s work in the US where he has achieved several changes in more than one US state and has many more in the pipeline. Look in the sub-menu to this page.
A changed approach
While some campaigning spends a lot of time and effort building a group, having meetings and conferences, maintaining a social-media feed, trying to get press coverage etc. garza’s approach is to identify the key issue and draft an amendment which specifically fixes that issue. For example, rather than trying to get the judiciary and police to actually enforce compliance with court ordered contact arrangements, which they are reluctant to do, Garza has drafted ‘Time taken, time back’. This short amendment states that, if one parent unreasonably restricts contact between the child and the other parent, when no reasonable grounds are found, the aggrieved parent gets back the same amount of contact time as they lost. These incentives compliance and greatly reduces this harmful, but common, practice.
Low emotion response
The other problem it fixes is that so many traumaised parants make the situation worse when they try to campaign. They are so caught up in their own emotions and the perceived injustice of their situation that they believe that, if only they can speak to their MP and explain that the MP will see the problem and be able to fix it.
What the parent is not aware of is the effect this has. The MP is dealing with a highly emotional parent who has a long story to tell. The MP has little time and, usually, they have little knowledge of family law, so would not know where to start, even if they wanted to. The MP meets a dozen other constituents that same day so that, by the next day, they have completely forgotten and be preoccupied with other constituency or parliamentary business.
Less controversial.
Many campaigners find that their MP seems afraid to support family court reform because of the backlash they anticipate from colleagues and highly effective campaigners who are defending women in these issues. Some of these are pushing the law in the other direction: making it even harder for fathers who they always perceive as ‘the problem’.
These short amendments, worded in gender-neutral language and presented professionally as ‘helpful suggestions that any thinking person would agree with’ are less likely to trigger this fear-response in the politician.
One issue at a time
Some campaigners try to do too much at once. They want new laws, several major changes etc. Garza argues that small changes lead to longer-term effects. For example: You have to abolish slavery before, sometime in the future, you get a black president.