Researching Reform will make an announcement at 12 am on Saturday.

A House of Commons briefing paper offers background to out of area placements for looked after children in England, and explains the concerns raised by child welfare bodies about these arrangements. It also outlines the government’s response to the concerns and its plans to implement various reforms.

The web page for the brief states that the number of looked after children placed outside their home local authority rose by an estimated 28% between 2010 and 2020, increasing from 37% of all placements to 41% over the period.

Additionally, the number of looked-after children living in unregulated accommodation rose by 89% between the end of March 2010 and the end of March 2020, from 3,430 to 6,480.

Stakeholders inside the child protection sector have raised the following concerns about these arrangements:

• Long distance placements can be traumatic for children
• Children living far away from home are at greater risk of going missing
• Children can feel isolated and often do not see loved ones often enough when placed long distances away from them

You can access the report in full here.

Additional links:

• Sector split on unregulated placements overhaul as under-16s ban looms
• Doughty Street Chambers webinar: 16 & 17 year olds and unregulated accommodation
• New laws in England will leave 16-year-olds living alone

The latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

• The Fight to Keep Families Together in Child Welfare
• Investigating unregistered schools
• UK immigration bill could fail stateless children, say MPs

Nagalro, an organisation which trains children’s guardians, family court advisers and independent social workers, has published a tool to encourage the use of friends and family to support child contact.

The tool, which is a 12 page document featuring guidance and a checklist, offers child welfare staff a way of assessing wider family and friends to support contact.

It is not a bad tool. We would query some of the assumptions made in the guide, such as the view in Part 1 that individuals are “unlikely to be suitable” if there is a need to make detailed notes about the contact. This, surely, should be assessed on a case by case basis, without unhelpful and potentially stigmatising bias being introduced into the guidance.

You can access the tool here.

Welcome to another week.

These are the latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

• Scottish ministers accused of needlessly delaying forced adoption apology (Scotland)
• Mother and Baby survivor (63) adopted in America meets her siblings for the first time (Ireland)
• Research Briefing: Forced adoption in the UK, 2018

Family court watchdog the Family Justice Council (FJC) will be looking at whether England and Wales should lower the age of majority from 18 to 16, in its annual debate.

The debate is titled, “Should the age of majority be reduced to 16?”

In light of the many pressing issues facing the family courts at the moment, we think this is a strange debate for the FJC to be having.

And as no explanation on the event page is offered by the family court president — who is also co-chair of the FJC — about what the age of majority is, why the council has chosen this topic, and why, more importantly, it has framed the topic the way it has, we are adding these details below.

The age of majority is defined as the age at which a child is deemed to become an adult in the eyes of the law, giving that person full legal capacity. Currently in England and Wales, children do not “become” adults until they reach 18 years-of-age.

Lowering the age of majority to 16 could have a deeply concerning impact on children. While it’s not clear why the FJC has chosen this topic, strained resources in the family courts and the child protection sector could be driving this debate with a view to literally cutting off thousands of children in need, just to save money.

Lowering the age of majority could lead to children being unable to access mental health services, social care support and other important resources inside the system which are often made available free of charge because they are minors, and because their families live below the poverty line.

It’s important to mention that while the law in England and Wales views children has having become adults in law at 18, scientists and child welfare experts disagree heavily on this benchmark, with some experts suggesting the brain is not fully formed until people reach 25 years-of-age.

Age thresholds are already problematic for the criminal justice system in England and Wales, which allows children as young as 10 to be tried in court for crimes. This boundary, which relates to the age of criminal responsibility rather than the age of majority, has been met with strong criticism from child welfare experts, many of whom say children are far too young at 10 to be fully responsible for their actions in law.

Lowering the age of majority to 16 also enables children to access a range of “adult” products and services. They would have unfettered access to alcohol, and would be able to smoke, gamble and buy weapons, which could be dangerous in situations where children are made vulnerable.

Children would also be able to vote, which would allow the younger generation to have a say in the way England and Wales are run, which is particularly important for them as they are inheriting the world adult policies and laws leave behind. Children trapped inside the care system could also free themselves from the system earlier, which could be an appealing option to children who feel they are not being treated well in their current placements.

But allowing children greater political input — or any other rights adults have which many children are more than able to embrace — does not have to come at the expense of stripping them of support or legislation which may protect them from harm or unfair treatment inside our legal justice systems.

Why the FJC has chosen to ask whether the age of majority should be lowered in its debate rather than for instance why it should remain the same or be increased isn’t clear, but it is concerning.

The event will be hosted by the president of the family court Andrew McFarlane, and includes the following speakers on the panel:

• Ruth Henke QC – Specialises in the protection of and provision of services to children and vulnerable adults.
• Deirdre Fotrell QC – Specialises in the law relating to children
• Family Justice Young People’s Board member(s)
• Shabina Begum, Solicitor – UN recognised authority on child, early and forced marriage.

Anyone wishing to attend the event can email fjc@justice.gsi.gov.uk giving your name, area of expertise, and contact details by 5.30pm on 24 November 2021.

Attendees have the option of watching the debate online as it will be live streamed using MS Teams, or go to the London-based venue and watch in person.

The web page for the event adds: “We will inform those applicants who have requested to attend in person whether they have been successful by 29 November 2021.”

The debate takes place on Wednesday 8 December 2021, from 5:30pm to 7:30pm.

Additional links:

• Timeline of rights for each age (England and Wales)
• United Nations in Brazil opposes lowering the legal age of majority to 16 (2015)
• Age of majority (EU)

The latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

• Councils can arrange Covid vaccines for children in care despite parent opposition, High Court rules
• Children say social workers are time-poor, overstretched and change too often, according to Coram
• Government to crack down on parents who abuse family courts for revenge
• Mum taken to court over lockdown childcare ‘breach’ sees case thrown out

Research looking at the effects of adoption on natural parents’ mental health — which was effectively buried or ignored by the adoption industry — has been collected and pieced together by adoption support group Origins Canada.

The group, which says it offers confidential support and resources to people separated from their families by adoption, has created a timeline of key pieces of research, which spans almost four decades.

The research highlights the devastating mental health consequences on mothers who lost their children to adoption, and looks at a range of phenomena including trauma, grief, attachment and anniversary reactions.

The papers also touch on fathers’ reactions to the adoptions – data which is often missing in adoption research.

You can access the research papers here.

Additional resources can be found here.

Many thanks to Tum Mum for alerting us to this library.

The latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

• Ofsted launches consultation for children’s homes
• JCVI discussed herd immunity among children before not endorsing jab rollout
• Genome sequencing set to improve chances of children with cancer

Welcome to another week.

A documentary titled, “Missing Children” investigates the Tuam mother and baby home in Ireland where hundreds of babies’ remains were found in unmarked graves on the site.

The discovery sparked international public outrage, and calls for an investigation into the remains, and how they got there, led to the Irish government announcing a review.

It is estimated that 35,000 unmarried mothers gave birth in the home, and were then forced to leave their children behind knowing they would be put up for adoption at a time when being unmarried and pregnant was seen as unacceptable.

The remains have raised serious concerns about how the babies were treated in the home, with former residents and child welfare experts suggesting that the babies and children were so poorly looked after by staff at the home that the infants died of neglect, and their bodies then hidden in mass graves on the land.

Four years on from the discovery, the bodies of these children have still not been excavated.

The documentary follows the journeys of former residents at the mother and baby home, as they try to find out what happened to their families. It also includes an interview with the forensic archaeologist who was in charge of preparing the site for excavation and her concerns about the way the site has been treated since the discovery.

Missing Children aired yesterday on ITV at 10.20pm, and can be watched on repeat now.

The documentary will air again on RTE tomorrow, 9 November, at 10.15pm.

Many thanks to Alison O’Reilly, who shared this documentary on Twitter.

Additional links:

• Tuam timeline
• Ireland government’s final report on the home
• CBC News coverage (YouTube report) (Canada)
• Husband of Irish mother and baby home survivor says Church was like secret service
• ‘Four years on and still no action’: Call for Tuam mother and baby home site to be excavated