How could Early Interventions be started?
To establish the new Early Interventions system entails re-configuring the procedures of a single court in England or Wales. Preliminary design would take about six months. Paperwork issued by the designated Early Interventions court has to be revamped. Local lawyers need to briefed, and the new pre-first-hearing processes must be set up, to include (i) obligatory ‘parent education’ and (ii) obligatory mediation - to inform potential litigants what would happen if they did go to court.
If the scheme works in one court, it would be rolled out nationwide.
Finance
The pilot can be produced and run for a couple of hundred thousand pounds. It is quite likely that, within weeks of starting, it will be clear that the overall national savings would run into many hundreds of millions a year., and that cases which currently take years to resolve can be satisfactorily settled in a couple of weeks.
Overseas Precedents
Judicatures in America, Norway and New Zealand have had versions of the new Early Interventions system for decades.
