The Exploration Of Social Workers' Participation In Family Trial In The Basic People's Court

Family trial reform is the hotspot of current civil trial work.In order to promote the exploration and practice of family trial modes and working mechanisms in court trials,the Supreme People's Court of China has issued three documents from April 2016 to July 2018,respectively,to guide and regulate the working requirements,working concepts and working mechanisms of the family trial reform pilot in detail.The introduction of a series of documents also provided opportunities and basis for social workers to participate in family trial procedures and innovative judicial services.Since the pilot project was launched,various judicial practices,such as prof-essional social workers acting as family mediators,family investigators,social caregivers and psychological counselors,have been tried in the trial of family affairs in some basic people's courts and achieved some success.Social work,as an important social force to properly resolve family disputes,has also received increasing attention from relevant departments.The main research methods used in this paper are interview and case study.I interviewed five people,including two judicial social workers employed by the L District People's Court,a judge of the L District People's Court and others to understand the roles played by social workers in the trial of family cases in the basic people's court and the difficulties faced by social workers in practical work.In addition,I selected three cases of family investigations and social care carried out by social workers in the L District People's Court,and described the cases in detail to show the ways and contents of social workers' participation in the trial of family affairs in the basic people's court.Through the analysis of the information collected from the interviews and the practical cases of the People's Court in L District of Jinan City,this study finds that the participation of social workers in the trial of family cases in the basic people's court can play a positive role in promoting the standardization of family investigation procedures,improving the level of flexible judicial services and promoting the professional development of social work.At the same time,social workers are also faced with the problems of lack of understanding of the concerned people,lagging in professional training and supervision,and short of working methods and service contents.In view of this,I put forward three improvement measures:firstly,perfect the assessment mechanism of social workers;secondly,strengthen the construction of supporting facilities for social work service station;thirdly,promote the link and integration of social resources.In a word,at present,the mature mode of social workers'participation in the trial of family cases is still relatively rare in China,and most of the practices in various places are at the exploratory stage.I hope this study can provide useful experience for the mechanism construction in related fields.I hope this study can provide useful experience for the mechanism construction of related fields.