Wanaka barrister and mediator Dr Deb Inder has been appointed to the Committee of the Children’s Rights Alliance Aotearoa New Zealand (CRAANZ), a coalition of non-governmental organisations, families and individuals that promotes the rights and well-being of children and youth through advocacy and education.

Deb has also recently completed her PhD thesis and, while the milestone is a huge accomplishment, Deb says it’s just the beginning of making change.

“When you finish your PhD you think you’re going to change the world, then you finish and realise it’s just the beginning of the work,” she said. 

Drawing on her experience “at the coalface” (Deb was admitted to the bar in 1998 and has many years experience working in family law), Deb’s thesis covered a largely unexplored topic: children’s participation rights within the the New Zealand family justice system.

“Being in practice I would see children coming out of the court process saying ‘my participation was a waste of time’ or saying ‘no one listened to me’,” Deb said. 

Delving further, she discovered that there was no clear best practice in family court when it comes to children’s participation. 

“It launched me on this journey,” Deb said. “How do we let children participate in our legal system? Is there a better way in which we could have children participate that is supported by research and theory?”

“A big part was identifying what those barriers were to children effectively participating,” Deb said. 

She found they included attitudes towards children, a desire to protect children from conflict, concerns about how participation could affect parents’ authority, and concerns children could be ‘coached’ to say what one parent wanted them to. 

But many of these concerns weren’t realistic, she discovered. “There is a lot of misunderstanding of what’ children’s participation means.”

“Children often said they actually don’t want to make the decisions but they want to have a say in things that are affecting them,” Deb said. “They would say: ‘We don’t want to be making the choices but we do want to be heard and listened to’.”

She found what children wanted to have a say in were often little things that gave them a sense of agency: maybe a child wanted the handover between parents to take place at a different location, or it was important to them they had access to their bicycle regardless of which parent they were staying with.

“A lot of their messages are really simple but really prophetic as well,” Deb said. “I really look at the children's needs as opposed to the parents’ wants.”

During the time working on her PhD Deb created a model for best practice for children’s participation in the justice system which she said could be applied globally.

Now that her PhD is completed, it’s getting that information - her research and model - out into the world that is her next big task. 

But Deb is already creating opportunities to apply her research and experience: she is currently working on an article to be published in an academic journal and in coming months she will meet with a working group from the New Zealand family law section responsible for making submissions on a significant Bill. 

Deb received her PHD in absentia after the graduation ceremony, scheduled for August 29, was cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions. Her thesis is titled: Children’s Participation Rights within the Context of the New Zealand Family Justice System.

PHOTO: University of Otago