A 5-year retrospective of post-separation shared care research in Australia

Abstract

In recent years, sweeping changes to the Australian family law system - new services, legal processes, legislation, and a new child support scheme - have been put into place, accompanied by a large research evaluation program. A central plank running through the recent reforms is the need for courts, and those who work with separating parents, to consider whether a child spending equal or else substantial and significant periods of time with each parent would be in his or her best interest and be reasonably practicable. While legal professionals, practitioners and policy analysts wait for the first wave of findings about how the new system is working, now seems like an opportune moment to pause and reflect on the past 5 years of Australian research into shared care. Do we know much more than we did 5 years ago when equal parenting time was first given formal policy prominence? The short answer is 'Yes' but the long answer is that our knowledge still remains at a basic level.