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• Funding: £125 million allocated to councils to support domestic abuse victims and their children
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• distribution
• Decisions: New children and education complaint decisions

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

• Today: Education Committee questions ministers about disadvantaged white pupils
• Home Affairs Committee investigates domestic abuse during Covid-19 pandemic (Parliament TV)
• New report shows separated parents who depend on family courts to resolve private disputes over child arrangements most likely to live in deprived areas

The former president of the UK’s Supreme Court will deliver a lecture on adoption, as part of a series of seminars organised by the Family Justice Council (FJC).

The FJC is a monitoring body which oversees the family justice system and promotes an inter-disciplinary approach to family cases.

Baroness Brenda Hale, who was the first woman to become the president of the Supreme Court, and the architect of the Children Act 1989 — the first piece of legislation to place children at the heart of decision making in the family courts — will be giving a lecture entitled, Adoption In The 21st Century.

The speech, which will be delivered online as a Bridget Lindley Memorial Lecture, will take place between 1 and 4 March 2021, from 5 pm to 6.30 pm.

To register interest in the event, you can email fjc@justice.gsi.gov.uk. Registration closes on 22 February.

The page housing information about the lecture on the Family Justice Council’s website isn’t working at the moment, but we have emailed the FJC to alert them.

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The Health and Social Care Committee launched an inquiry on January 29 to assess the government’s progress with regard to improving children and young people’s mental health provision.

The inquiry is also going to examine whether the children’s mental health sector should be moved towards a more holistic approach, which would prioritise early intervention and prevention as well as crisis care, and find ways to tackle the rising number of children who self-harm and commit suicide.

The announcement follows Children’s Mental Health Week, which began on Monday.

The inquiry is currently accepting submissions for evidence, to cover areas which include but are not limited to:

1. The ambitions laid out in the 2017 Green Paper
2. Provision of mental health support in schools.
3. Provision of support for young people with eating disorders
4. Addressing capacity and training issues in the mental health workforce
5. Improving access to mental health services

The inquiry is also hoping to receive submissions which address the following questions:

• How inpatient care can be improved so that it is not creating additional stress on children and young people, and how the use of physical and medical restraint can be reduced
• The wider changes needed in the system as a whole, and to what extent it should be reformed in favour of a model that focuses on early intervention in children and young people’s mental health to prevent more severe illness developing
• How the Government can learn from examples of best practice, including from other countries?
• What measures are needed to tackle increasing rates of self-harming and suicide among children and young people?

The decline in children’s mental health has become a deeply troubling aspect of the Covid-19 pandemic, and aggravated by rising levels of poverty and lack of access to good support services.

A report published by NHS Digital in October, found that the number of children experiencing a probable mental disorder had increased over the past three years, from one in nine in 2017 to one in six in July of last year.

Data collected and published in the Mental Health of Children and Young People in England 2020 report, found that the rate had risen in boys aged 5 to 16 from 11.4% in 2017 to 16.7% in July 2020 and in girls from 10.3% to 15.2% over the same time period.

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Welcome to another week.

As Children’s Mental Health Week begins, we have just one simple question to ask:

In what ways do you think the family courts impact children’s mental health?

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Scientists begin testing Covid vaccine on children

‘A 6-Year-Old In A 90-Year-Old’s Body’ – The Children Devastated By Long Covid

Guinea becomes the 61st state to ban all corporal punishment of children

A case in which a mother living in Norway sought to set the adoption of her son aside on the grounds that her lack of consent was in breach of her right to family life, was heard in the European Court of Human Rights today.

The hearing in Strasbourg focused on whether Norway had violated Mariya Ibrahim’s religious rights as a Muslim in allowing her son to be forcibly adopted by Christians. The hearing forms part of what is a long and protracted case filled with conflicting professional evidence and what appear to be serious oversights with regard to the boy’s best interests.

Ms. Ibrahim became pregnant when she was 16 years old, and after a traumatic incident fled to Kenya in 2009 where she had family, and gave birth to her son in the same year.

In 2010, Ms. Ibrahim left Kenya with her son, travelling first to Sweden and then Norway, where she applied for asylum. Once she was granted refugee status, the mother asked for support to care for her son and was admitted to a mother and baby home.

The home grew concerned about Ms. Ibrahim’s parenting, and notified children’s services, who then forcibly removed her son and placed him in foster care in 2010.

The County Social Welfare Board applied for a care order, which the mother opposed. She then lodged another claim asking for her son to be placed with her cousin in Norway, or in a Somali or Muslim foster home. The mother’s claim was ignored, and the Board issued the care order and granted her contact rights of two hours, four times a year. Her son was placed in care with a Christian family.

In 2013, children’s services applied to revoke Ms. Ibrahim’s parental responsibility so that her son could be adopted by the foster carers.

A claim to cease all contact between Ms. Ibrahim and her son was also lodged with the court at the request of the foster carers.

The claims were allowed, and the mother appealed twice, arguing that while she accepted her son had settled into life with the foster carers, it would not be in his best interests to have no contact at all with his birth mother and sole connection to his cultural and religious roots.

Claims and appeals raised by the mother and allowed by various courts continued for several years, and looked at the levels of contact the mother had been allowed prior to the adoption and whether the High Court had, for instance, placed more importance on the foster parents’ opposition to an “open adoption” than to the applicant’s interest in continued family life with her child.

In December 2019, the European Court of Human Rights found that there had been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention (right to respect for private and family life), and allowed the mother’s appeal.

Speaking to Norwegian state broadcaster TV2 in 2019, Ms. Ibrahim said, “Norway steals children when they do it the way they have done it to me. It’s been so painful. I was only 16 years old and completely alone when I came to Norway. They should help mothers and fathers who are struggling, instead of taking the children.”

Norway, much like the UK, has been heavily criticised for the sharp rise in the number of children in state care. Campaigners say the large numbers of children in care in the two countries stem from a lack of understanding about the differences between neglect and poverty, and financial pressures and incentives to place children in foster homes and with adoptive parents.

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• Increased child infection rates cast doubt on school reopenings (Israel)
• Democratic congressman to introduce sweeping child abuse prevention bill Monday (US)