This briefing offers some suggestions about how we might measure success in the family justice system. Noting the importance of a system-wide strategy focused on improving the lives of children and their families, it hints at how we could already start to make progress on ensuring transparency and accountability with existing data – as well as where improvements to data collection and use could bring significant insights in the future.

What does this briefing aim to do?

This briefing is designed to help stimulate thinking on potential measures of success for the family justice system and the kind of data that we might need.

In order to develop this briefing we:

• scoped similar outcomes frameworks for children, thinking about key domains in the family justice system and developed a long list of measures of success
• held a workshop where the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory leadership team worked collaboratively to prioritise the measures, looking at importance and feasibility
• refined our list to develop measures that are feasible in the short term as well as some that we might aspire to in the longer term.

We have based our briefing on our own goals for the system – but of course the actual measures that need to be put in place will depend on the forthcoming family justice strategy (see HM Treasury Minutes, December 2025) and would need to be developed in a systematic and participatory way.