Hot off the Voice of the Child Conference, and now numerous statements from government officials looking to prioritise children in family proceedings, comes a report which claims that children’s interests are still not fully fixed on the government’s agenda.
Written by Dr Julia Brophy, Kate Perry, Alison Prescott and Christine Renouf, in conjunction with NYAS and the Association of Lawyers for Children, it aims to balance media access with the Voice of the Child.
The report highlights the need to ensure children’s privacy is safeguarded during the court process, at a time when more transparency is called for both within the family justice system and by the media at large. In it, the report suggests that Parliament should be able to scrutinise media access in such cases.
There are other suggestions, too. In relation to the current policy which is moving towards including Young people’s views, the authors argue that a full-scale consultation should take place to fully weigh up what is being proposed and what children think about the proposals. The authors also appear to indicate that this kind of research might be lengthy, given the serious nature of the issues at hand.
Young people questioned felt that children’s rights, views and interests were still not on the government’s agenda.
Given that Lord Justice Munby, the President of the Family Division is very aware of the need to balance right to privacy and public interest where children are involved, we are not sure whether this research is necessary, and too time consuming, when what we should really be doing is focusing on improving social work, expert training and getting children’s wishes and feelings in the mix when trying to work out what’s best for them. However it will be interesting to see how certain quarters respond to this report, particularly government sectors who seem to be focusing on child welfare for the time being.
You can access the full report here.
Researching Reform 
Simon Hughes ,the Minister for justice in a recent speech emphasised that the UN Convention on children’s rights stressed the need for children to be heard in court in proceedings that concern thiem .He then stated that the government intended to enforce this rule in favour of all children aged 10 and over.
This is welcome news indeed given that when parents try to call their children as witnesses in accordance with Article 6 (human rights act) judges nowadays routinely attack those parents for exposing their children to emotional harm and putting their own needs before those of the children.Judges in family courts nearly always prefer to call a guardian or social worker to put in evidence what purports to be the views of the child but when in fact they are often the complete opposite .Many highly intelligent children in care are denied their right to choose their own solicitor so they write imploring letters to the judge begging in vain to be heard and to be allowed to return home.These children are gagged if they try to report sexual abuse by a fosterer or social worker and younger ones are marked down for forced adoption.
Sir James Munby President of the family courts emphasised in a recent case that adoption without parental consent must always be a last resort when no other remedy is feasible;In fact of course nearly every country in the EU either does not allow, or very rarely permits such adoptions so that other remedies are found proving that “forced adoption “is not a last resort but a remedy of choice in the UK where protesting voices of parents and older siblings are disregarded Babies are taken at birth for risk of emotional abuse and subsequent adoption separating them not only from parents but also from their older brothers and sisters,grandparents,and friends .Hopefully the voices of children will now be heard in court more often; especially when they are begging to keep together families of non criminal parents, babies ,siblings grandparents and other relatives!
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Hi FA, I really hope so. We have yet to see whether the issues of professional training to ensure that happens is going to be on the agenda. I’ve written something on that for Jordans which should be out in a bit, so hopefully we can discuss that in due course too.
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