Trustees Leading the way for Shared Parenting Scotland at Glasgow Kiltwalk 2026

Shared Parenting Scotland trustee, Fiona Mundy, and her husband, retired sheriff John, are taking part in the Glasgow Kiltwalk on April 26th to support our work helping separating parents put their children’s future ahead of past hostilities.

My name is Fiona Mundy. I am a retired Solicitor Advocate and have been a Trustee at Shared Parenting Scotland for about a year. I worked in general litigation at various firms mainly in Edinburgh for over 40 years. Throughout that period I dealt with child and family law cases in both the Sheriff Court and Court of Session.

I was also a family law Arbitrator and prepared Child Welfare Reports for Edinburgh Sheriff Court. I became ever more concerned at the way that family law cases involving children were dealt with by all the people involved, including the parents, solicitors and the courts. I first became involved with Shared Parenting some 15/20 years ago when they were known as Families Need Fathers Scotland.

I was impressed at the support being provided to their clients and their professionalism. Having been asked to become a Trustee a year ago following my retirement I have been impressed at the way that the organisation has developed over the past 12 months in particular, helping children by supporting their parents through separation and divorce.

I trained as a Coach in the New Ways for Families programme introduced by Shared Parenting Scotland in 2022 and was lucky enough to work with several separated parents who used the programme that year. It is, in my view, ground breaking.

It provides parents with the tools to avoid or at least minimise the damage which their animosity and inability to deal appropriately with each other in the midst of their separation causes their children. I am very impressed with the programme which has uses for those who complete the course beyond separation. The people I worked with reported concrete improvements for themselves and their children when they used the techniques taught.

It is very important to support parents to direct their issues away from their children. I believe that Shared Parenting Scotland helps parents to do this in all their initiatives. As a former litigator I believe very strongly that the courts are not the best place to deal with disputes involving children. I frequently felt that the system was almost designed to promote discord.

I realised this early in my career when I took over a family case from a colleague. My client was separated from his children as a result of various allegations made by his wife against him. My colleague and his opponent had both engaged in throwing ever more unpleasant accusations against their clients into the process. The atmosphere was toxic.

Fortunately my client’s wife’s solicitor left Edinburgh and I was able to speak with his replacement to ask him if we could stop throwing mud and concentrate on what was in both our clients’ interests. He agreed entirely with me that things had got out of hand. Both parents were appallingly stressed.

At a joint meeting we were able to calm the situation down and both parents admitted that they and the children were very unhappy with what had been happening. They accepted that they had both made mistakes and said things that they should not have said. The children were reunited with my client and when our clients came to court to be divorced, they left hand in hand together with their children.

My husband John, a retired Sheriff, shares my views. He has seen too many cases where parents lose sight of what is in their and their children’s interests in the hurt of family breakdown. He will be walking with me at the Kiltwalk raising funds for Shared Parenting Scotland.

Shared Parenting Scotland is non-adversarial. They place the children at the heart of what they do. I feel privileged to have the opportunity to work with them to try and make things better for separated families in Scotland.