Beyond the 26-week limit for public law care proceedings

In this article, Ben Rosie explores why it is essential to look at more than timeliness when measuring success in the family justice system.

Since 2014, the family justice system has relied on the Public Law Outline’s 26‑week statutory limit as its primary indicator of success in care proceedings. While this brought a focus to streamlining processes and procedures, and ensuring cases do not drift, a system can meet the 26‑week limit and still deliver outcomes that are unstable and damaging for children and families. However, at the national level, the average has never gone below 27 weeks, and after spiking again after Covid, has only recently started to slowly decrease again. Additionally, the metric is vulnerable to even the slightest fluctuations, which is difficult to respond to when the data is collected and reported retrospectively.

A system where success is defined by speed, will continue to optimise for efficiency rather than effectiveness, and families' outcomes will remain a secondary consideration behind time.

The limits of measuring timeliness alone

While professionals across the system broadly agree that timeliness matters and this focus has helped prevent drift and delay, rigid adherence to this 26‑week limit can distort decision‑making and orders can be made that do not adequately reflect children’s long‑term needs.

This means risks can be inadequately explored and resolved, care plans may not be robust, and insufficient family support put in place. Where these issues are present, cases can be re-litigated, new assessments required and most importantly, it can lead to instability for children where they have no certainty of where they may be going next, or why.

Timeliness remains important, but speed is not a proxy for quality. Without complementary measures, the system cannot distinguish between cases that conclude quickly because they were well prepared and those that conclude quickly because they were prematurely closed.

We cannot run a system which sacrifices justice at the altar of speed.

Re‑centring performance on outcomes for children

If the purpose of the family justice system is to secure safe, stable and lasting homes for children, performance metrics must reflect that. It is essential we shift the family justice system towards outcomes‑focused measures, including longer‑term indicators of whether decisions made in court have improved children’s lives.

These should include placement stability, emotional and mental wellbeing, housing security and sustained relationships for children, measured 12 to 24 months after proceedings conclude.

If we’re really serious about this, we also need to be looking at recurrence as a measure, as outlined by the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory. without understanding this, it is impossible to properly support families and help to address underlying family issues. The journey from early intervention to statutory social care to family court is not linear: it is a loop, and it will continue to repeat if it is not proactively monitored.

Without these measures, there’s no way for the system to understand whether children’s lives are improving. Measuring outcomes allows learning from what works, not just compliance with deadlines.

Why process quality still matters

Focusing on outcomes rather than just timeliness doesn’t mean process can be overlooked. The way children and families move through the system plays a crucial role in shaping those outcomes. Monitoring factors such as the number of hearings, reliance on expert assessments, how often hearings are vacated, the gaps between hearings, and the underlying causes of delay can provide a much clearer picture of how cases are progressing, and where improvements are needed.

Currently, however, this kind of information is often fragmented where different organisations collection different data markers at different points in the family’s journey, is inconsistently recorded where not all stakeholders have the systems to track the same data, or not shared across organisations to triangulate around a family. With better access to reliable process data, local systems would be better placed to spot outliers, challenge unnecessary assessments, minimise avoidable hearings, and drive greater consistency to support both judicial and professional decision-making.

Ultimately, measuring the quality of process helps to support meaningful improvement, rather than defaulting to explanations that focus solely on capacity pressures.

A more meaningful definition of success

Richer performance metrics are essential for effective system leadership. Designated Family Judges and Local Family Justice Boards are expected to oversee and improve local systems, yet often lack the timely, shared and meaningful data that would enable them to do this effectively.

A broader performance framework would enable benchmarking, peer learning and constructive challenge and importantly, would allow leaders to see the whole system, not just windows into specific parts.

The 26‑week limit remains an important safeguard against drift, but it should not be treated as the definition of success. A high‑performing family justice system is one that makes the right decisions, for the right children, in the right way, with lasting impact.

By measuring outcomes, experience and process alongside timeliness, the system can move from counting cases to improving lives.

For more information on Mutual Ventures’ work with family justice and access to the resources produced as part of the DFJ Trailblazers Programme, see our dedicated web page here.

To discuss any of the themes or content within this article, please contact Ben Rosie at ben.rosie@mutualventures.co.uk.