A week before the FNF Scotland event in Edinburgh about Parental Alienation, a research report from the Nuffield Foundation challenges the need for shared care legislation, stating that "Resident parents were much more likely to have actively encouraged contact than to have undermined it."

Based on surveys of 400 young people and in-depth interviews with 50 of them, it illustrates what does and doesn't work about contact arrangements from the young person's point of view. 

This is an important and useful piece of work, and the interview quotes should give all separated parents much to think about.  It suggests that key ingredients in successful contact include the absence of parental conflict; a good pre-separation relationship between the child and the (future) non-resident parent; the non-resident parent demonstrating his/her commitment to the child and the child being consulted about the arrangements.

But it seems regrettable that such useful research has been accompanied by a very one-sided view of the proposed shared-parenting legislation. 

The leader of the study, Professor Jane Fortin, comments that:  "The strongest theme from our study is the importance of tailoring contact arrangements to the needs and wishes of the individual child in their particular circumstances. This is best achieved by retaining the courts' discretion to determine whether or not the welfare of the particular child in question would be furthered by the involvement sought by the litigant parent.

"To commit the court to presuming that such involvement will further the child's welfare is to apply a simplistic, broad-brush approach to the subtle complexities of the child-parent relationship."

The shared parenting amendment to the Children Act does seek to introduce a consideration that both parents matter, but it certainly doesn't remove the discretion of the court - stating quite clearly " if that parent can be involved in the child’s life in a way that does not put the child at risk of suffering harm."

The two contrasting case studies chosen for the summary report also seem remarkably one-sided - one talks about positive memories of having contact with a non-resident mother, the other refers to negative experiences of contact with a non-resident father.  

And given that the study didn't include any respondents who could be defined as "alienated", it is surprising that chapter 13 raises such concerns about parental alienation, while omitting to mention the most recent UK study by Kirk Weir.