The Children Act of 1989
In this essay, I refer to the words Power and Duty. The word power in legal terms is the ability to do or act, which implies a choice. Duty is an obligation; something that law binds me to do. This essay is written in answer to a case study, which examines a situation, which focuses on the Children Act of 1989. This act was composed to protect the welfare of all children, whatever their circumstances and backgrounds.
“An Act to reform the law relating to children; to provide for local authority services for children in need and others; to amend the law with respect to children’s homes, community homes, voluntary homes and voluntary organisations; to make provision with respect to fostering, child minding and day care for young children and adoption; and for connected purposes.”
In this essay I am assuming the role of the social worker. In this case Peter and Jane have a baby son called David, who is about four months old. It says in section 2 (1), that where the child’s parents have been married before the conception of the child, they shall each have parental responsibility for the child, the meaning of parental responsibility is discussed in section 3. In this case, both Peter and Jane were married at David’s birth. Jane bought David in to hospital with a severe head injury. Upon examination by the hospital staff he is found to also have suffered previous injury to some of his ribs. This has caused grave concern and given rise to the hospital notifying the police. They in turn have gone on to notify the local authority, which has appointed me as David’s social worker. Under section 47 I have a duty to investigate the allegations and also a duty to contact all other agencies who might be involved...
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...e whole case will be reverted, but they may have conclusive evidence that has been over looked. As the child’s social worker, I would hope that at the end of the proceedings that there was a happy ending for all of the people concerned, but it would still have to be David’s interests that would come first.
Bibliography:
Bibliography
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M.Hayes, C.Williams. Family Law. Principles, Policy and Practice. Butterworths. London. 1995
M.Oldham.Statutes on Family Law 2000 to 2001(9th Ed). Blackstone Press Ltd. London. 2000
H.Brayne, G.Martin. Law for Social Workers(6th Ed). Blackstone Press Ltd. London. 1999.
M.Davies. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Work. Blackwell Publishers. Oxford. 2000
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Parton, N., Thorpe, D. and Wattam, C. (1997) Child Protection Risk and Moral Order, London: Macmillan
Thoburn, J.; Lewis, A and Shemmings, D. (1995) Paternalism or Partnership Family Involment in the Child Protection Process, Blackwell.
The Children’s Act 1989 and 2004: This act is all about ensuring that the children are kept safe from harm and are developing healthy. It’s important that settings support children and their families and work together with them to provide the best for the children. In 2004 the act was revisited because of the Victoria Climbie case and the every child matters came into place where five main aims were made: be healthy, stay safe, achieve through learning, achieve economic well-being and make a positive contribution to society.
The areas in which these reforms should occur are twofold. One argument that Judge Ross raises repeatedly is that measures should be taken to insure the sustainability of Family Court employees through more manageable caseloads. The necessity of this change is evident in countless examples of children suffering as a result of constantly changing, thin-spread, staff. In one particular instance, a six month child abuse case is adjourned because they “don’t have the medical records” in time (128). The second argument that can be implicitly made based off of Judge Ross’s expressed frustrations is that, if given the proper time for consideration, there should be more room for consideration of circumstance in Family Court. From a legal standpoint, there is substantial evidence for the validity of a common law approach to Family Court over the traditional civil law. Judge Ross establishes that ideally “In each case to protect children, to assure due process, to remain neutral until the facts are established, to apply common sense and sound judgment within the framework of the law in making decisions—the Family Court judge’s charge lies quite outside the arena of public policy, comment, and debate” (104). However, as seen in many of his cases, the combination of the overflowing workload and an inability to apply proper consideration to any given circumstance makes it impossible for the pre-existing
The main requirement of the Children Act was to ensure all agencies worked together to safeguard children. Please talk about this? ABishop 25.5.16
...children, young people and their families can be both complex and difficult. Social work practice is one of the most challenging as it involves work with a diverse range of both professionals and service users. However, there is more that one single reason for this. As all professionals, agencies and parents continue to work together in various different cases, a variety of skills are required including: communication, preparation, intervention skills, assessment of significant harm, research of current legislation and decision making skills, all of which contribute to the complexities and difficulties of social work. It could be argued that these difficulties are highlighted most in many public cases of child abuse; moreover these cases can be seen to be changing social work practice, affecting the difficulties and complexities of working within this profession.
i. legislative requirements and expectations on individual services to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and
The uniform adoption act of 1994 was drafted by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL). The Uniform Adoption Act of 1994 seals adoption records for 99 years, makes it illegal to search for birth parents by anyone including the adoptee, shortens revocable consent periods that many states have enacted to a dismissal 8 days from birth of the child (Uniform Adoption Act, 1). This proposal of the uniform adoption act just shows what is wrong with the adoption process, adoptees should have the right to search for their birth parents for medical and personal reasons.
In the essay Licensing Parents, LaFollette argues that the state should require all parents to be licensed (182). Though LaFollette considers some theoretical and practical objections to his claim, he gives no particular attention to how parenting could be precisely defined as potentially harmful to children, what specific competence would be required for parenting to be done safely, and how reliably such competence could be determined. In this paper, I maintain that, since LaFollette’s argument does not provide an adequate clarification of the definition of harm and the attributes of competence, his argument needs serious revision. After describing LaFollette’s basic rationale for licensing parents, I will indicate that LaFollette’s ambiguous explanations for harm and attributes for competence are problematic. In addition, I will show that even if parenting satisfies LaFollette’s criteria, there are special reasons why it should not be licensed. Though this does not prove LaFollette’s idea to be false, I will suggest that if LaFollette offers a better definition of harm and an adequate explanation for competence, his argument will be stronger with a greater feasibility.
This essay will first address the statute used and interpretation of the threshold test by the courts, and then focus on cases involving vulnerable children to assess whether the statute in The Children Act 1989 is sufficient in protecting these children from harm. I will look at the argument in favour of the current approach taken by the courts, and the counter-argument in favour of changing the current approach. The arguments are delicately balanced and the law is always developing, so it will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court resolves this issue in future.
When a court is dealing with proceedings relating to a child, section 1 of the Children Act 1989 (CA 1989) governs that the court’s paramount consideration shall lie with the child’s welfare. The term paramount was explained by Lord Macdermott in J v C which means ‘that the child’s welfare is to be treated as the top item in a list of items relevant to the matter of question’. His Lordship went on to explain that when all the relevant facts and circumstances are taken into account and weighed, the outcome chosen by the court is based on the interests of the relevant child. Therefore any other party’s interest is only considered as far as it contributes to promote the child’s best interest.
In 1978, The Indian Child Welfare Act was enacted for the intent to strengthen the permanence of the Indian families and tribes, mainly the protection of the Indian children from non-Indian traditions and way of life. The act was the foundation for the basic federal standards in legal actions involving Indian parental rights being terminated, Indian children pre-adoption/adoption placement. There has been resistance to the provisions from the start. Another provision of the ICWA allowed the tribes to attain legal jurisdiction over the Indian child welfare matters such as developing and implementing juvenile codes, courts, tribal standards and child welfare service (Turner, C., 2016).
In a child protection work, formal knowledge is not only an understanding of the law, official regulations, and ways of practice, but also a theoretical view of 'child development, family dynamics and methods of intervention' (Munro, 20...
Commission for Social Care Inspection (2005) Making Every Child Matter, Commission for Social Care Inspection
...from violence and abuse. Children are now entitled to have much more of a say in their futures such as in residency cases where the Court will give consideration to the child’s wishes.