The Boys' and Girls' Clubs Association of Hong Kong (BGCA) was founded in 1936 with the mission "Nurturing the Young, Create the Future". We are committed to promoting the physical and mental health development of children, emphasising a child-centric approach to protecting their wellbeing and providing a wide range of professional services for children, youth and families.
The Legislative Council Panel on Welfare Services followed up on the Children Proceedings (Parental Responsibility) Bill on 17 June. Since 2019, BGCA operated one of five Specialised Co-parenting Support Centres that provide one-stop co-parenting support services to separated, divorcing, divorced parents and/or their children in New Territories East. They help divorced parents use “child-centric” principles to fulfil their parental responsibilities and strengthen parent-child bond. They also support children affected by parental separation and family changes by promoting their physical and mental health development. BGCA would like to provide some commentary on the following topics.
Current service overview
Specialised Co-parenting Support Centres have gone through three years of epidemic since their establishment. Examining service data during and after the epidemic can help us better understand the situation and outlook of divorced parents and their children. As of the end of March 2024, the five centres collectively provided support services to more than 1,900 cases and conducted nearly 25,000 visitations and handovers. The number of cases this year is 30% higher than the 1,459 cases in 2022-2023. According to data from 2019 to 2023 provided by the five Specialised Co-parenting Support Centres operated by non-governmental organisations, 86% of service users were people who have been separated or divorced for less than 5 years. Nearly 80% of divorced parents were between 31 and 50 years old and over 75% of children were between 4 and 12 years old.
Key factors for successful co-parenting
The number of joint custody orders issued by the courts has increased in recent years, reflecting the increasing number of parents willing to parent together after divorce. When a marriage ends in divorce/separation, both parties are often dissatisfied and emotional. Add to that personality traits, emotional management abilities, familial and societal pressures, cultural differences between East and West, financial burdens, legal procedures and more. All these factors affect care arrangement for children and can even damage relationships between joint parents. According to the experience of frontline staff, the reasons for divorce/separation, sensitivity to the needs of children, and personal mental health are all key factors for the success of co-parenting. BGCA recommends that divorcing couples who have children under 12 years old must complete a co-parenting workshop/course and receive mandatory counselling and mediation in order to properly care for their children, manage their finances etc. as soon as possible. Relevant measures can help speed up legal processes. Handling matters of childcare, discipline, and finances before entering the legal process can also smoothen the divorce procedure and help promote co-parenting.
Challenges of co-parenting
In reality, not every divorced family supports joint custody. Some divorced parents feel that the other parent is unable to care for their children before and/or after the divorce and therefore reject co-parenting. They sometimes even refuse contact with the other parent. They feel that co-parenting complicates matters or causes further harm to their children. This is not just resentment towards their ex-spouse, but also having to deal with the fallout of divorce. Ultimately, they think it is best to raise their children on their own. When arranging supervised access/handover, in addition time and location, it is crucial to manage disagreements and the emotions of both parents. Frontline staff are often caught in the middle. Adequate legal support, clinical supervision, professional training, and a reasonable staff-to-case ratio can improve current services and help divorced parents who face conflicts and challenges with cooperation.
More education beyond publicity
In addition to public education and publicity, BGCA recommends that the principles of child-centeredness, child protection and joint custody should be incorporated into pre-marriage, parental education, pre-divorce, remarriage, and even student sex education courses and activities. By exposing society to related information and education at different stages of life, we can gradually change outdated ideas and build a child-friendly society.
Settling financial disputes is key to successful joint custody
Divorces often face obstacles collecting maintenance from their ex-spouse. Some even have to rely on the Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) Scheme for financial assistance. According to data from the Census and Statistics Department, there were 13,900 cases of maintenance default in 2015, accounting for 40.5% of all maintenance payments. Among them, 88.1% of maintenance recipients did not take legal action to recover the money. When asked about the reasons, 27.2% believed that "the ex-spouse will not pay", 22.5% said that "the procedure for filing legal proceedings is too complicated", and 18.7% said that they were “unable to contact the ex-spouse".
Failure to comply with a maintenance order maybe because of financial problems on the part of the payer, or due to personal or family problems that cause the maintenance to exceed their financial means. BGCA is pleased to see that the Home and Youth Affairs Bureau will be launching the Maintenance Mediation Pilot Scheme this year to help resolve disputes and reduce conflicts through mediation, and to provide one more method to recover maintenance.
The government has taken a series of measures over the years to help divorcees recover maintenance, including relaxing requirements for courts to issue Attachment of Income Orders, imposing interest or penalties for maintenance defaults, allowing designated government departments to disclose the address of maintenance payers to legal professionals upon request, and increasing the monthly maintenance amount that is eligible for exemption from the Director of Legal Aid’s First Charge. BGCA recommends further reviewing the effectiveness of the above measures to help those in need recover owed maintenance payments.
The Family Council previously commissioned the Further Study on the Phenomenon of Divorce in Hong Kong. However, due to the lack of data on the number of maintenance orders issued each year, the number of cases of defaults and the amounts involved, the study was neither comprehensive nor thorough. BGCA recommends that the government collect and collate these incomplete data and combine them with data on the effectiveness of maintenance recovery measures to consider whether to set up a dedicated department to handle maintenance payments or introduce more recovery measures in the future.
Divorced families are increasingly common, with the divorce rate rising from 48% in 2019 to 58% in 2020. In 2021, there were 72,279 single-parent households with around 94,508 co-living children. Single-parent families have been identified as one of the specific target groups for poverty alleviation. Frontline staff have occasionally learnt that service users face financial difficulties due to defaults in maintenance payments. BGCA recommends that the Social Welfare Department optimise the current procedures to allow single parents to immediately stop deducting maintenance from their CSSA by providing a simple proof or oath; the applicant can then later submit the court documents for maintenance recovery as proof. If the applicant subsequently recovers defaulted maintenance payments, the Social Welfare Department can deduct the relevant amount from their monthly CSSA, either in one lump sum or in instalments based on their financial capacity.
Handling financial disputes in divorced families is an important foundation for implementing joint custody. Maintenance payments plays a protective role for divorcees and their children as they can alleviate the financial and psychological burden on the family and promote parental responsibilities after divorce.
Conclusion
Divorced parents often argue over issues such as maintenance and custody rights, leaving their children caught in between. How to protect the well-being of children in divorced families is an important issue in today's society. If divorced parents fail to properly handle their disagreement and conflicts, the harm can be passed down from one generation to the next, and may even destroy the marriage and family life of the following generation. If divorced parents can put aside each other's past wrongs, fulfil their parental responsibilities based on child-centred principles, and strengthen parent-child bond, it will help promote the physical and mental health development of their children and reduce cross-generational impact. To achieve joint custody, in addition to legislation, adequate legal support, clinical supervision, professional training, a reasonable staff-to-case ratio, comprehensive family education, and effective handling of financial disputes in divorced families are all indispensable.
