11. Public Law Protection

Family Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penelope Russell
Keyword(s):  
Local Authority ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Public Law ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Welfare Assessment ◽  
The Family ◽  
Threshold Criteria

Public law protection of children challenges one of the fundamental principles of England and Wales that children are best brought up by their parents. Unlimited state intervention in the family is not permitted and the courts have to strike a balance between maintaining stability for children within their family, and protecting them from harm. This chapter considers the statutory duties of the local authority towards children as well as emergency action to protect a child. It examines what has to be proven to obtain a care order and the evidential difficulties connected with this; in particular, the difficulties posed for the courts where harm is caused to a child by an unknown perpetrator. The chapter ends by exploring the options available to the court at the welfare assessment once the threshold criteria have been met.

scholarly journals Born into Care: characterising newborn babies and infants in care proceedings in England and Wales

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bachar Alrouh ◽  
Karen Broadhurst ◽  
Lucy Griffiths ◽  
Rhodri Johnson ◽  
Linda Cusworth ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Child Protection ◽  
Local Authority ◽  
Support Service ◽  
Incidence Rates ◽  
Outcome Data ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Family Court ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
The Family ◽  
Court Intervention

Background/rationaleNations with advanced child protection systems place considerable emphasis on the developmental salience of infancy. However, this emphasis is not matched by any differentiated analysis of the timing of family court intervention in the lives of infants or the final legal order outcomes of these cases. This presentation shares findings from the first ever population profiling study of infants subject to care proceedings within the family justice system in England and Wales. AimTo estimate the proportion of all infant care proceedings cases issued within 7 days and 4 weeks of birth and describe case and infant characteristics; to calculate incidence rates over time and by local authority and family court region; to describe and compare legal order outcomes according to age. Methods/approachData was extracted from case management records produced by the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) England and Wales. Records were first restructured to link infants to legal order outcome data and birth mother records. Incidence rates were calculated using ONS mid-year population estimates and annual live births. Within the SAIL Databank, Welsh infant records were linked to birth registration and community child health data to produce a fuller picture of infant characteristics in Wales. ResultsThe cohort we created comprised all infants recorded as subjects within care proceedings in England (2007/08-2016/17) and Wales (2011/12-2018/19). The study captured the high proportion of infant cases that are issued at/close to birth, but also marked regional and local authority variation in incidence rates. ConclusionHigh rates of adoption, particularly for babies born to mothers without a previous family court history, have prompted calls for new preventative solutions. The President of the Family (Court) Division in England has initiated a review of legal proceedings at birth.

scholarly journals Direct harms and social consequences: An analysis of the impact of maternal imprisonment on dependent children in England and Wales

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 519-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shona Minson
Keyword(s):  
Social Processes ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Dependent Children ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Child Relationship ◽  
Research With Children ◽  
The Family ◽  
Mother And Child ◽  
The Impact

This article draws upon research with children whose mothers were imprisoned in England and Wales, to investigate the impacts of maternal imprisonment on dependent children. The research directly engaged with children, in accordance with Article 12 of the UNCRC 1989, and is set within an examination of the differentiated treatment in the family and criminal courts of England and Wales of children facing state initiated separation from a parent. The article explores children’s ‘confounding grief’ and contends that this grief originates from social processes, experienced as a consequence of maternal imprisonment. ‘Secondary prisonization’ is characterized by changes in home and caregiver and the regulation of the mother and child relationship. ‘Secondary stigmatization’ occurs when children are stigmatized by virtue of their relationship with their mother. These harms to children call into question the state’s fulfilment of its duty to protect children under Article 2 of the UNCRC 1989.

Legal problems of the paternity institution: Child's rights ensuring issues

2020 ◽  
pp. 267-286
Author(s):  
Mikhail A. Gussev ◽  
Yessil S. Rakhmetov ◽  
Aliya K. Berdibayeva ◽  
Ainash Yessekeyeva
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Practical Significance ◽  
Social Constructs ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
Rights Of The Child ◽  
Legal Problems ◽  
The Family

The aim of the article is to analyze the paternity as a component of the institution of the family, its modern transformations and the resulting challenges, including modern features of parenthood. The authors show that the modern understanding of paternity is determined by gender identity and social constructs that equalize the rights of all persons who act as guardians of the child. The authors determine that the problem of paternity involves not only civil issues, but also family and in-ternational law. The authors of the article clearly show that paternity can act not only as a voluntary, conscious act, but also as a mandatory legal norm. In particu-lar, the authors note that it is possible to use the method of establishing paternity or delegating part of the authority to raise a child in the context of considering public law and its prevalence over family law. The practical significance of the study is determined by the fact that the importance of establishing the principles, as well as the legal conditions for implementing the functions of paternity, will form not only legal but also social forms and even economic parameters for citi-zens and address issues of ensuring human rights, including the rights of the child.

‘It’s all considered to be unacceptable behaviour’

2016 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vickie Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Housing Policy ◽  
Local Authority ◽  
Housing Authority ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Critical Questions ◽  
Housing Options ◽  
Criminal Justice Practitioners

Despite a growing recognition of the intersectional relationship between homelessness and incarceration, we have a limited knowledge about housing policy and practice for people leaving custody and (ex)offender groups in the community. Addressing these gaps, this paper provides an overview of the main local housing authority statutory duties in the provision of housing support for prison leavers and (ex)offenders in England and Wales, and situates the issues with accessing accommodation within the wider context of austerity. The paper presents a case study that explores criminal justice practitioners’ experiences of working with local authority housing agencies. Stemming from 25 interviews with housing practitioners and criminal justice practitioners, the paper outlines the main challenges facing criminal justice agencies as they try to secure accommodation for homeless (ex)offenders and resettle them in the community. Finally, the paper concludes by raising critical questions about the housing options for this population, now and in the future.

scholarly journals The Role of Family in Modern China

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2021/1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zsombor Rajkai
Keyword(s):  
Filial Piety ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Intergenerational Relationship ◽  
Contemporary China ◽  
Social Unit ◽  
Chinese Families ◽  
Workplace Relations ◽  
The Family ◽  
Political Economic

Following the Maoist period (1949–1976), which stressed workplace relations over family ties and the post-Mao era, which restored the family as an important social unit, the family in contemporary China suggests a blended picture of both pre-modern, modern and post-modern characteristics. For instance, the increasing intergenerational relationship accompanied by strong filial piety shows a quasi-return to pre-modern conditions, whereas the freedom of mateselection rather reveals a modern characteristic of Chinese families today. In contrast, China’s current low total fertility rate shows a post-modern feature of the family, albeit as a result of direct state intervention in the private sphere. This blended and compressed characteristic can also be seen in the ambiguous transformation of the private (family) and ‘public’ (defined here as ‘non-private’, such as political, economic and civil society) spheres. However, it can be argued that contemporary China, which offers new perspectives to social sciences for a better understanding of the different paths of modernisation in general, is being characterised by a sort of new modern familism where the family continues to play an essential role in social responsibility and sustainability.

The Child’s Guardian – Listening and Giving Weight to Children’s Views

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen James ◽  
David Lane
Keyword(s):  
Child Protection ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Protection System ◽  
Review Panel ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
The Family ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Children’S Views ◽  
Meaningful Relationships ◽  
Insight Into

Both the child protection and public child law systems assume a child-centred approach is at the heart of their work with children. That assumption is based on what are considered child-centred principles, which are enshrined in legislation in England and Wales in the Children Act 1989, mainly the principle of paramountcy of the child’s welfare in Section 1(1) and the principle of no delay in Section 1(2), in relation to the completion of proceedings ( hm Government, 1989). However, comprehensive reviews of both the child protection system (Munro, 2011) and the family justice system (Family Justice Review Panel, 2011), along with research findings (Cappleman et al., 2013) present a picture that challenges this assumption. Increasingly, the focus on the child’s life and welfare is hampered by a lack of time and resources available to professionals such as Guardians to enable them establish a meaningful and trusting relationship with the child in order to gain insight into and an understanding of the child’s world from the child’s perspective. The child appears to be very much on the periphery of a system that lacks real connectedness with the child and their view of their situation and circumstances. Such a level of connectedness can only be achieved by providing children with space and time to develop trust in and meaningful relationships with those whose duty it is to represent their true wishes and feelings and give due weight to the child’s perspective.

State, Market, and Popular Sovereignty in Agrarian North America

2020 ◽  
pp. 177-199
Author(s):  
Christopher Clark
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Productive Capacity ◽  
The Family ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Nineteenth Century United States ◽  
American Political Economy

This essay focuses on agriculture and particularly the “freehold ideal” of independent farmers in the nineteenth-century United States. An odd contradiction of American territorial settlement was the farmers’ simultaneous drive to exploit resources for the market and the aim of many of those actively engaged in settlement to shield themselves from the market’s dangers by acquiring land on the frontier. Clark shows how the ideal of freehold farming, which was so central to the American political economy, was actually threatened not so much from the dangers of the market overwhelming the small farm as from the family farm running out of labor to uphold its own productive capacity. Labor, not land, was the problem confronting the freehold vision, as he argues in a provocative re-reading of late nineteenth-century small farmers’ calls for state intervention.

18. Care and Supervision

2021 ◽  
pp. 663-717
Author(s):  
N V Lowe ◽  
G Douglas ◽  
E Hitchings ◽  
R Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Local Authority ◽  
Critical Issue ◽  
Considerable Importance ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Welfare Of The Child ◽  
Court Orders ◽  
Court Proceedings ◽  
Threshold Criteria ◽  
Children In Care

The Children Act 1989 places considerable importance on local authorities working in partnership with families and the avoidance wherever possible of court proceedings. However, the Act also makes provision, in the form of care and supervision orders, for compulsory measures to be taken to safeguard and promote children’s welfare. This chapter focuses on care and supervision orders. It covers the initiation of proceedings; the threshold criteria, which refers to conditions set out by s 31(2) that must be satisfied before a care or supervision order may be made; the ‘welfare stage’, where the court must, pursuant to s 1(1), regard the welfare of the child as the paramount consideration; tackling delay in care proceedings; court orders; appeals; and discharge of care orders and discharge and variation of supervision orders. The chapter ends by discussing the position of children in local authority care, focusing on the critical issue of contact with children in care.

scholarly journals Deaths of Despair and Brexit Votes: Cross-Local Authority Statistical Analysis in England and Wales

2020 ◽  
Vol 110 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Koltai ◽  
Francesco Maria Varchetta ◽  
Martin McKee ◽  
David Stuckler
Keyword(s):  
Regression Models ◽  
Local Authority ◽  
Sociodemographic Factors ◽  
Social Suffering ◽  
Death Rates ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Percentage Point Increase ◽  
Point Increase ◽  
Deaths Of Despair

Objectives. To test the hypothesis that deaths of despair, a marker of social suffering, were associated with greater support for Brexit in the United Kingdom’s 2016 European Union referendum. Methods. We used cross-local authority regression models of Brexit vote shares on changes in suicide and drug-related death rates before (2005–2007) and after the recession (2014–2016), adjusting for sociodemographic factors. The population comprised 345 local authorities in England and Wales. Results. Mortality rates were associated with voting patterns. An increase of 10 drug-related deaths per 100 000 was associated with a 15.25-percentage-point increase in Brexit votes (95% confidence interval [CI] = 10.27, 20.24), while an increase of 10 suicides per 100 000 was associated with a 9.97-percentage-point increase in vote shares for Brexit (95% CI = 6.25, 13.70). These results were substantially attenuated after we adjusted for education, and reduced to nonsignificance for drug mortality (b = 2.18; 95% CI = –0.21, 4.57) and suicide (b = 0.94; 95% CI = –0.32, 2.21) upon inclusion of other sociodemographic factors. Conclusions. Worsening mortality correlated with Brexit votes. These phenomena appear to share similar antecedents. A rise in such deaths may point to deeper social problems that could have political consequences.

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