Magellan
Cases that come to the Family Court that involve allegations of sexual abuse and/or serious physical abuse of a child go into the Court’s Magellan program. The Magellan program is for cases involving the most vulnerable children. The program aims to deal with these cases as effectively and efficiently as possible.
Where a Form 4 Notice of Child Abuse and Family Violence alleging sexual abuse and/or serious physical abuse of a child is filed in a case involving an application for parenting orders, the application is referred to the Family Court Magellan registrar to consider listing to the Magellan program.
A Magellan team is made up of judges, registrars and family consultants who manage the cases. The same team endeavours to work on each case from start to finish.
Magellan is based on the following principles:
- it is an inter-organisational approach to cases involving allegations of serious physical, and sexual abuse
- it focuses on the children in the dispute
- it is judge-led and managed from the start, with a tightly managed and time limited approach
- the Court orders expert investigations and assessments from the respective state/territory child protection agency and/or the Court family consultant,
- there is a Court-ordered independent children’s lawyer for every child, funded by Legal Aid.
Generally, the aim is to complete Magellan cases within six months from the case being listed into the Magellan program.
Early steps in a Magellan case include:
- a detailed family report, where appropriate, analysing the family dynamics and the needs of the children, and
- judge-ordered early information from the respective state/territory child protection agency including whether
it intends to intervene in the Family Court proceedings, whether it has previously investigated these or other allegations, the conclusion and the reasons for the conclusion of the investigation, and any recommendations or other relevant information.