Hearing children in court disputes between parents.

Previous research in this area has found that the majority of children do not have their views taken when parents take a dispute over contact to court (Scottish Executive 2000, McGuckin & McGuckin 2004). The present research is the first to collate data on the actual views expressed by children and on the impact of those views on the outcome of the cases. It is also the first court based research collating data on domestic abuse and contact outcomessince the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006 put the need to protect a child from abuse onto a statutory basis. It also goes some way to plugging the gap left by Wilson and Laing’s (2010) research into the views of (mostly male) pursuers in contact cases through the inclusion of the views of defenders and children to ‘enable a more rounded picture of how parties experience court action’