Family President outlines next steps for national Deprivation of Liberty court

The President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, has revealed that the National Deprivation of Liberty (DoLs) pilot and the existing guidance in support of Ofsted are “in the process of being reviewed”.

The President revealed in ‘A View from The President’s Chambers: July 2023’ that the hope is to publish a revised scheme during this month.

The national DoL court was launched in July 2022 as a 12-month pilot to deal with all new applications to deprive children of their liberty, when there are concerns about their welfare, via the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court.

The Nuffield Family Justice Observatory (NFJO), which has been collecting and publishing data on DoLs applications found that between July 2022 and April 2023, the national DoLs Court recorded a total of 1,139 applications.

The NFJO also found that applications have been made by 151 different local authorities and 21 hospital or mental health trusts.

The majority of children (58.6%) involved in applications were aged 15 and above, with a small minority relating to children under the age of 13 (9.4%). The number of girls and boys subject to applications is almost equal – a pattern that has broadly remained consistent month-by-month, the NFJO revealed.

As the 12 months draws to a close, the Family President revealed that the essential changes to the pilot and existing guidance are likely to be:

• The label ‘DoLs Court’ will be replaced by the more accurate title of ‘National DoLs List’.
• Applications will continue to be issued through the Royal Courts of Justice (RCJ) and initially listed for hearing in the National DoLs List.
• Cases which are likely to require a number of future hearings will be transferred to the relevant regional centre and allocated to one judge there, to ensure a level of judicial continuity and to allow some contact, if required, with the young person who is the subject of the application
• A reduced requirement on the court with respect to monitoring or policing registration of unregistered placements.

Other topics in the President's announcement included the PLO relaunch and the Transparency Implementation Pilots.

Lottie Winson