We are the peak shared parenting organisation in Australia, working to educate and increase the prevalence of Shared Parenting for children and their parents after separation or divorce.
Established in 2002, the Council has brought together many Australian parenting groups, Church groups and individuals to advocate for a change in Family Law Legislation that would encourage shared parenting outcomes for families.
Objectives and Purposes
- Promoting the family as the fundamental social unit of society.
- Encouraging and supporting parents, to jointly and equitably share the rights, duties and responsibilities of parenthood.
- Promoting the fundamental rights of children to maintain frequent and continuing contact with both their mother and father following parental separation or divorce and to experience and enjoy, the love, guidance and companionship of both their parents in an equal and shared manner.
- A presumption that when parents separate, children will be entitled to share equal or substantially equal time with both parents.
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What We Do
- Provide resource material that can help prevent separations and build strong healthy family relationships.
- Encourage greater involvement by both parents in their children's lives after separation and also protect children from violence and abuse.
- In the case of separation, we provide information, advice and direct parents to dispute resolution services to help them agree to what is best for their children rather than contesting opposing proposals in the court room.
- Being an entry point that provides doorways to other critical services that families need and facilities to access those services.
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Achievements
- Our organisation was instrumental in developing many excellent legislative reform components in the 2006 and 2011 amendments that have directly lead to the following:
- A regime where the children are safe, and have the benefit of both parents involved in their lives, protected from physical or psychological harm or being exposed to abuse, neglect or family violence.
- A presumption of equal shared parental responsibility.
- A regime that facilitates, and encourages, a close and continuing relationship between the child and the other parent.
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Our Team
Founder/President
Queen's Counsel,
Renowned Author
Executive Secretary
Federal Director
Vice President,
President Lone Fathers Association,
President Parents Without Partners
Manager Self Represented Litigants group (SRL)
Our Services
Web Guide
Emerging Issues
Publications
Join Us!
We are a non-profit organisation run by donations from people like you. If you like what we are doing, please consider making a donation — every penny helps!
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Stay in Touch
Follow us on social media to keep in touch with our activities and the latest developments in regards to Austrialian Family and Child Support laws, and much more!
Shared Parenting in the Shadow of the Law
Law academics, judges, women's legal services, and single mother groups have said much about the great wave of harm that could flow from implementing a rebuttable presumption of shared parenting in family law. Much of it has been alarmist, some extreme, but a great deal of misunderstanding of the proposed reform is evident in many claims. Some of the arguments start off with the premise that shared parenting is "parent focused", not "child focused", and somehow fails to put a child's best interests first.
However, the question that arises in this debate is: How can you act to protect the best interests of a child, if you don't uphold that child's fundamental human rights? If you genuinely acknowledge and accept that every child has the right to experience the love, guidance and companionship of both their mother and father, you must support having societal structures defending those rights — especially in troublesome emotional times such as parental separation and divorce.
Our Resources
