Tine Egelund: Children’s interests and children’s rights: do cases about child support take necessary consideration of the child
This article questions whether the Child Protective Services Act is in the best interest of the child and respects the rights of the child. The article illustrates the idea of the best interest of the child by reviewing the discourses on children’s needs in the Convention on the rights of the child, Danish legislation on child protection, and research on child neglect and abuse. It is argued that none of these sources offer clear guidelines for practice as to how to take the best interest of the child into consideration. In reality, the best interest of the child is decided by the individual social worker, who works within a framework with few legal restrictions, and whose assessments are based on scanty knowledge. The article demonstrates that children have few and limited rights in Danish legislation, and that the most important decisions about their fate rest on professional assessments, for which there are only few standards. In addition, studies show that the child protection services often violate the few rights that children have.
0793 A Comparison Of Children’s Sleep Characteristics From A Community Sample And From Child Protection Services For Child Neglect.