Heralded as the most progressive legislation of the world, the Children Act of 1989 revolutionized children’s law in England and Wales. It is underpinned by six principles: the supremacy of the child’s interest in all decisions concerning their upbringing and education; the recognition that it is best for any chid to be brought up by their blood family, that his religious and ethnic background must be respected, and that siblings should not be separated; the abolition of the stigma of illegitimacy and its replacement with the attribution at birth of paternal responsibility to the child’s father; the unification of public and private law, and the creation of the ‘menu’ of Residence, Contact, Prohibition, and Specific Issue orders available to the court; the establisment of the new principle that time is of the essence in all cases relating to children; and the creation of the presumption that ‘no order is better than an order’ thus the ingerence of the court must be minimal. I believed in those principles and in the benefits that the Children Act would bring to my clients—children and parents alike. I had some reservations: the system was expensive to implement on two counts: first, it gave the child a ‘guardian’ (a qualified social worker appointed by the court through CAFCASS, a governmental agency), as well as their own solicitor paid for by Legal Aid, as was the representative of the parents, who had the right to instruct independent experts; second, because its requirements of social services and other agencies involved further training and increased resources, as well as further involvement of the judiciary, and increased court time. Hornby and Levy were at the forefront of its implementation: our entire staff received in-house training that was open to other disciplines, within the spirit of cooperation between agencies that permeated the Act and its implementation. I also lectured in Britain and abroad and was proud to tell others that social services were under a duty to keep families united, rather than removing children from parents, and make efforts to return to the family the child removed from it, or if this failed, to place the child within the extended family, or with adoptive parents, within a year.