The Child Focused Court Preparation Toolkit

Everything you need to prepare for the Child Impact Report, gatekeeping and your Decision Hearing, from a specialist children's barrister.

Written for the new Child Focused Courts, still widely known as Pathfinder.

If your case is going through the family court right now, you may have heard it called Pathfinder. You may have heard it called the Child Focused Model. You may have heard it called three different things by three different people at the same court. That's not you being confused. That's genuinely what's happening.

The process changed its name in 2026. The substance didn't change much at all. Whether your paperwork says Pathfinder, Private Law Reform, the investigative approach or Child Focused Court, this toolkit is written for exactly your case.

I'm Jason Hadden MBE. I've spent over twenty years in family courts up and down the country, representing parents, grandparents and children in exactly this kind of case. I've watched people arrive with a carrier bag full of the wrong papers and no idea what the judge is actually going to ask them. I wrote this so you don't have to be one of them.

What's changed, and why it matters to you

Under the old system, most parents got a safeguarding letter, then a first hearing, then, much later, a full report. Under the Child Focused route (the one everyone still calls Pathfinder), the court finds out about your child first, before you ever set foot in a courtroom. That means the preparation you do in the first few weeks matters enormously. Get it right early, and you're in a completely different position by the time you reach a Decision Hearing. Get it wrong, and you're playing catch-up for months.

This toolkit is the preparation I'd want every one of my own clients to have done before I met them.

What's inside

Seventy-five pages, ten parts, built around the actual shape of your case from first thought of applying through to what happens if the order isn't working:

• What's changed, whether your court is using it yet, and how to find out for certain
• Getting your forms right, the C100, the C1A, the C7, and the mistakes that quietly sink an otherwise good case
• Preparing properly for your conversation with the Family Court Adviser, the single most important conversation most parents have in the whole case
• Understanding the Child Impact Report and responding to it like someone who's read it twice, not someone reacting to the first paragraph
• Domestic abuse and safety, including the special measures you're entitled to and how to ask for them
• Building a chronology and an evidence file a judge will actually read, rather than one that gets a screenshot 1,437 problem
• A parenting plan built around your child's real week, not a fifty-fifty spreadsheet
• Getting ready for the Decision Hearing, on the day, and what to do if it isn't the final word
• Reading your order properly, enforcement, and what to do if it stops working
• Ten working pages you fill in yourself, so by the time you're in front of a judge, everything you need is already in one place

Plus a full jargon buster, a help and support directory with current numbers, and every legal source cited and checked, current as of September 2026.

Who this is for

Anyone whose children's case is going through the Child Focused Court, whatever anyone else is calling it. It doesn't matter whether you started the case or the other parent did. It doesn't matter whether you're using a solicitor or representing yourself. If you're a grandparent, there's a section written specifically for you.

What this isn't

It isn't legal advice on your individual case, and it won't guarantee an outcome. Nobody honest can promise you that. What it will do is make sure you walk into every stage of this process having actually prepared for it, rather than finding out what you needed halfway through the hearing.

Format: Instant PDF and Word download. Working pages are yours to print and reuse throughout your case.

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