Six-year-old Ciara used to hold her head in her hands, tipping it from side to side. Sylvia Thompson examines how marital separation affects children

She would wake in the morning hoping things would be better for her so she would not have to try to make her parents happy.

When it was time to eat in either house, she would often eat in both parents' homes to avoid one feeling put out. She found this tiring and she wished she didn't have to do it

These poignant notes were taken by a Barnardos staff member working directly with this six-year old child in an effort to help her parents understand the need to take her thoughts, wishes and feelings into consideration during the protracted and painful process of their marital separation.

This assistance - officially called Guardian ad Litem - is available to only a small percentage of the children caught up in long, drawn-out legal separation and divorce cases. But what about the others - the vast majority of children whose voices are not taken into account in the maelstrom of emotions and legal arguments that dominate many of the 3,000 divorce proceedings in this country each year? How do they feel? Who is looking after their best interests?

Speaking at a recent conference, Supporting the Family in a Changing Society, Geoffrey Shannon, solicitor and expert on European family law said: "Marriage breakdown comes as a shock for a child and provokes an emotional crisis akin to a bereavement. What strikes me about the Irish system is the relative invisibility of children. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child requires the voice of the child."

The recently established Family Support Agency is a step in the right direction, Shannon tells The Irish Times. A State-run body, it will have responsibility for co-ordinating mediation, counselling and other core issues surrounding marital breakdown. However, Shannon believes much more needs to be done so that the legal system in family law cases moves from one that is adult-centred to one that is child-centred, as is happening in other European countries such as the Netherlands.

"We have to question the appropriateness of the adversarial system for family law cases. The process itself is intimidating. We need to make family law cases more of an inquiry [ inquisitorial system of law] as happens in other European countries," says Shannon.

Another more radical solution might be to adopt a new type of family law process, which has developed in places such as Canada and is being embraced by an increasing number of family lawyers in this country. This form of collaborative family law involves the lawyers meeting the two parties in the same room to discuss the case. And, if they fail to reach agreement, the lawyers must pass the case on to other lawyers who will then initiate court proceedings. Such a process, one imagines, would encourage lawyers to avoid court proceedings. Using buildings dedicated to family law would also help to make the legal process less intimidating.

This is the practice in Dublin, but moves to set up family law courts outside the capital were abandoned by the Government earlier this year.

As family structures change, there is growing awareness that children of co-habiting parents may be less supported when such relationships break down.

"We are beginning to realise how we have neglected anything other than the traditional family and there is need for support for children in alternative family units. In the European Union, there is a move towards understanding the nature of relationships and their stability rather than the legal status of the family. The State also needs to learn that how parents manage conflict affects the children's adjustment to conflict and how extended conflict can theaten or cast blame on the child," continues Shannon. The provision of conflict training for separating parents has been found to help communication and resolution of cases in other countries.

International research into the effects of parental separation on children suggests that children whose voices are taken into account will adjust better to the separation. Taking such information on board in this country will, however, require a change in mindset - from one of protecting children from the distressing details of their parents' separation and/or divorce (according to Shannon, many children find out their parents are separating through listening outside the solicitor's office) to one of acknowledging their right to know what's going on in language that they can understand and relate to.

In terms of deciding how involved children should be at what age, Shannon says Irish courts will not listen to children under 12.

"EU research has recently concluded that this age limit is based on old psychology and younger children are able to form and articulate their feelings on access. We often talk about the competence of children. Maybe we should be talking more about the competence of professionals to understand and communicate appropriately with children," he says.

Claire Missen, co-ordinator of Teen Between, the marriage and relationship counselling service for teenagers, says caution is required in working out to what degree children's voices should be heard in divorce proceedings.

"Only those who have a mind of their own - which is usually in adolescence - should be asked about their preferences about issues such as where to live. And this should always be in the context where they don't feel there is a divided loyalty. Also, there should be no hidden agendas (e.g. 'I'll lose the family home if I don't get the children') on the parents' part," she says.

In terms of the legal process itself, Missen adds that one of the hardest situations for teenagers is when a parent is told by his solicitor to "move back into the family home, or don't move out of the family home, or else he'll lose all his rights as it will look like he deserted the family. In these situations, children are completely powerless, and it can be deeply distressing for them to live with parents who aren't talking to one another. One client of ours had the perfect solution to this: if solicitors could get together and everyone sign a piece of paper which said, 'If I move out of the family home, I won't lose my rights'."

The funding crisis faced by the Barnardos Guardian ad Litem service is sadly indicative that the State has not yet recognised its legal responsibility to children caught up in marital breakdown.

"Ireland was a signatory to several international instruments which required the voice of the child in the legal and adminstration process," says Shannon.

"We don't get any State funding for our service," says Freda McKittrick, head of the the service at Barnardos. "There needs to be a family courts welfare service so that when parents are struggling, the case is looked at early on from the child's point of view. We see a lot of cases in which the level of difficulty could have been prevented if the family had support earlier on."

The child's name at the begining of the article is not her real name