Systemic harm and institutional silencing: children’s wellbeing in private family law proceedings

Children involved in private family law proceedings in England are frequently positioned as passive subjects whose safety, agency and health needs are subordinate to those of adults. Despite sustained criticism of safeguarding failures and growing evidence of the harms of child maltreatment, limited research has examined children’s experiences through a lens of childism, particularly in relation to their well-being. We address this gap by exploring the experiences of 77 children as reported by their mothers who participated in a qualitative study examining the intersection of post-separation abuse and private law proceedings. Using a hybrid inductive-deductive thematic analysis informed by childism and child as method, we analysed how children’s responses were interpreted, silenced or transformed within proceedings. Four themes are presented: 1) Systemic harm and children’s health, 2) Institutional silencing and the reproduction of adultism, 3) The selective recognition of children’s agency and 4) Transformational possibilities within constrained systems. The paper gives recommendations for embedding child-centred principles into legislation and practice. These include ensuring children’s voices are systematically heard in all family law proceedings, incorporating the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) into domestic law, creating mechanisms for meaningful participation and training professionals to adopt rights-based approaches.