The team at the Victorian Family Law Pathways Network - Greater Melbourne would like to wish you happy holidays and a fantastic new year! Thank you all so much for being valued members of our network, attending our events, engaging in our social media, and keeping the Victorian family law sector connected!
Here's a recap of some of the things we've been up to (event-wise) this year!
We started off the year with another offering of our Law Student Training Day (Family Violence and the Law for Future Lawyers 2018) due to the high demand. This January training was run in conjunction with Women's Legal Service Victoria and was so popular, we ran another session in December!
At the beginning of May we hosted our annual POP Forum - 2019's theme was 'High Conflict Families in Family Law - Good Practice Forum'. This all day event featured fantastic speakers from No to Violence, Women's Legal Service Victoria and the Group Work Centre. The engaging and knowledgeable presentations from the speakers ensured that attendees walked away from the event with new skills and tools to implement in what is often a difficult practice area.
A few weeks later we held our 'LGBTIQ Families in Family Law' event featuring presentations from Rainbow Families Victoria, Drummond Street Services and Nicholes Family Lawyers. An event surrounding LGBTIQ families had been highly requested from our membership and so we were pleased to finally be able to provide it to you! If you ever have any suggestions or requests on topics for events, please contact us and let us know - we might just do it!
Our 'Child Protection and Family Law' event was held in June, and featured presentations from the Co-Located Child Protection Principal Practice Advisor - Family Law Liaison as well as experience lawyers who discussed a hypothetical scenario following a family as their matter intersects between the two jurisdictions.
In August we hosted our 'Family Violence Information Sharing Scheme & MARAM' event, in collaboration with Family Safety Victoria. This was an incredibly informative event that included information and resources that practitioners were able to take away and utilise in practice when interacting with clients.
One of our most popular events, 'The Voice of the Child in Family Law' featuring 'Tommy' was held in November. This event delved into AIFS research surrounding the importance of listening to the voice of the child in family law proceedings and decision-making processes. These discussions and data were complemented with the viewing of the short film 'Tommy', directed by barrister Darren Mort of the 'To Be Loved' Foundation. At this event audience members were given the opportunity to win one of six children's books (Tommy & Tiger Terry) to be used as a practitioner resource in practice.
In December, at the request of our wider network, we managed to squeeze in one more event - 'Child Support in Parenting Disputes'. At this event, presenters from Victoria Legal Aid's Child Support Legal Service provided information on the type of assistance they can offer, and discussed the child support system in general. We also held another offering of our highly anticipated annual Law Student Training Day just last week. Due to the high demand of law student training opportunities (particularly in family law), we have already begun organising one our of first events in 2020 - a law student training surrounding child protection!
Thank you again for a great 2019, we look forward to seeing you at our events in 2020!
