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29 J. Soc. Welfare & Fam. L. 1 (2007)

handle is hein.journals/jnlosclwl29 and id is 1 raw text is: Journal of Social Welfare & Family Law Vol. 29, No. 1, March 2007, pp. 1-2 Editorial This first issue of 2007 has a distinctly international flavour. Whilst our sections focus on UK developments, the articles provide a range of insights from family law approaches in other countries. This should be of interest to those readers who wish to locate their area of family or welfare law in a wider context. Whilst the broad subject areas of these articles have been covered on several occasions in this journal in recent years, these accounts offer a fresh perspective into practice elsewhere. The first article examines family mediation services in Hong Kong. It reflects how Hong Kong is developing under Chinese rule, but also shows interesting continuities and parallels with recent developments in the UK. Family mediation around separation and divorce has, of course, been an important topic in UK family law since the passage of the Family Law Act 1996. This particular analysis, by Y.C. Chan and colleagues at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, reflects the increasing importance of mediation services within Hong Kong. The article assesses the results of a major pilot project on mediation which lasted for three years from its introduction in 2000. On the basis of these results, the authors are largely positive about the potential role of mediation services in helping families through the divorce process. This is partly because, they argue, mediation as practised in the pilot project has a basic compatibility with Chinese cultural practices around family relationships. The authors also make a series of broad recommendations for how such family mediation services can be improved. The Hong Kong social and cultural context continues to evolve, so such initiatives will need to remain sensitive to the tensions between traditional cultural perspectives on the family and the developing social landscape of increasing divorce levels. Our second article, by Diane Scott and Julie Kunselman of the University of West Florida in the USA, deals with another subject that has appeared regularly in this journal. The authors examine how domestic violence cases are treated in one State. More specifically, they focus on the role of the Unified Domestic Violence Court in the State of Florida. In general terms, they are critical of the service that such courts offer to women; for example, the relative tardiness of these courts in referring individuals on to relevant specialist services. As with the previous article, there is some reasonably recent legislation to take into account. In this case, that legislation - at the federal level of government - is the Violence Against Women Act 2000. Within the context of that Act and, more especially, of growing public concern about domestic violence, the authors consider the experiences of petitioners (997 of them) to the court during 2003. Their conclusions are critical of the failure of these courts to adequately support domestic violence victims (usually women). The authors therefore come up with a number of suggestions for improvement. ISSN 0964-9069 print/1469-9621 online © 2007 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09649060701423248

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