Families Need Fathers recruiting for lay assistant training course

Families Need Fathers Scotland, the Scottish charity supported by the Scottish government and the Tudor Trust, is recruiting for a ‘lay assistant’ free training course to run in Edinburgh in November.

As the number of party litigants appears to be increasing steadily in family law actions, FNF Scotland has been aware of the importance of the support and steadying influence a lay assistant can have both in court and before court in keeping focus on the important issues at hand.

FNF Scotland National Manager, Ian Maxwell, said: “We ran a good pilot course in Glasgow last month, introducing prospective lay assistant volunteers to the role they can play and the support they can give.

“We are clear that they’re not surrogate solicitors and aren’t there to give legal advice. But they are there to assist the party litigant - and the court - by taking notes of what is said during proceedings and keeping track of any documents that may be referred to during a child welfare hearing or, more crucially, during a proof.

“There has been more use of lay assistants in other areas of civil litigation such as debt or housing but we have noticed the increased number of people who are opting to represent themselves in contact and residence cases. They do for a variety of reasons but the main one is that they find their earnings are just above the SLAB threshold but aren’t enough to cope with legal fees that can quickly turn into thousands.”

Depending on demand, the course will run over two sessions in mid-November and includes presentations by FNF Scotland staff and family law solicitors, video simulations and role play. The training is free, funded by the Scottish government’s Volunteering Support Fund.

Further courses will be run in Aberdeen and Stirling in early 2017.

Mr Maxwell said: “Our overall aim is a review of family law to reduce the adversarial nature of resolving arrangements for parenting of children after separation. We always advise negotiation or mediation rather than litigation.

“In the meantime we can’t ignore the rising number of party litigants and this training is aimed at helping them present their case as efficiently and effectively as possible in the interests not only of the court but in the interests of the children involved.

Anyone interest in signing up for the training should e-mail a.williamson@fnfscotland.org or call 0131 557 2440.