From Monday, accredited journalists can speak to families about their ongoing cases, report what they see and hear in court, and quote from key documents – provided they keep those families anonymous.

Family courts determine cases that have profound effects on family lives, like deciding whether children should be taken into care or which parent they should live with.

Hearings are held in private, and while journalists have been allowed to attend since 2009 they have had no right to report.

Monday’s change follows a two-year “transparency pilot” which began with three court centres and now covers almost half the family courts in England and Wales.

Using the pilot, the BBC has reported on multiple cases, including one in Cardiff Family Court where a young mother, whom we called Bethan, had to spend £30,000 to protect her young daughter.

Her ex-husband, the child’s father, had been convicted of multiple paedophiliac offences.

The Family Court agreed he should lose parental rights over the little girl.

Bethan told us she thought the new regime was “fantastic news”. She said “allowing reporting in the Family Court sheds light on issues that the public should have the right to know about”.

Her daughter, she said, was now thriving.

“She has an empathy and sympathy for her little friends that simply couldn’t have developed if she were being brutalised in the way that her father’s victims were. Thanks to the Family Court judgement, she stands a chance at having a full and happy life.”

BBC reporting of Bethan’s case led the then-MP Harriet Harman to campaign to change the law on parental access – which is now under way.

In the future, no other parents in Bethan’s position would have to go to court to remove parental rights from those convicted of the most serious paedophiliac offences.