Achieving positive change for children? Reducing the length of child protection proceedings: lessons from England and Wales

Court decisions are required to remove children, compulsorily, from their families, and approve permanent care arrangements which restrict or terminate parents’ rights. The children involved are mostly young, have experienced serious abuse or neglect and may require permanent placement away from their parent(s) for their remaining childhoods. In England and Wales, justice to parents has dominated the rhetoric about these proceedings; this has resulted in lengthy proceedings, long periods of uncertainty for children and reduced placement options. In order to reduce delays, reforms in England and Wales have set a time limit for the completion of care proceedings. The Children and Families Act 2014 limits proceedings to 26 weeks; approximately 60% of care proceedings are now completed within this period. This article will discuss the impact of these reforms on decision-making for children, questioning whether they achieve both good decisions for children and justice for families. It uses the findings of an ESRC-funded study: ‘Establishing outcomes of care proceedings for children before and after care proceedings reform (2015–2018)’

Decision making in child protection:An international comparative study on maltreatment substantiation, risk assessment and interventions recommendations, and the role of professionals’ child welfare attitudes

Item does not contain fulltextChild welfare professionals regularly make crucial decisions that have a significant impact on children and their families. The present study presents the Judgments and Decision Processes in Context model (JUDPIC) and uses it to examine the relationships between three independent domains: case characteristic (mother's wish with regard to removal), practitioner characteristic (child welfare attitudes), and protective system context (four countries: Israel, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland and Spain); and three dependent factors: substantiation of maltreatment, risk assessment, and intervention recommendation. The sample consisted of 828 practitioners from four countries. Participants were presented with a vignette of a case of alleged child maltreatment and were asked to determine whether maltreatment was substantiated, assess risk and recommend an intervention using structured instruments. Participants’ child welfare attitudes were assessed. The case characteristic of mother's wish with regard to removal had no impact on judgments and decisions. In contrast, practitioners’ child welfare attitudes were associated with substantiation, risk assessments and recommendations. There were significant country differences on most measures. The findings support most of the predictions derived from the JUDPIC model. The significant differences between practitioners from different countries underscore the importance of context in child protection decision making. Training should enhance practitioners’ awareness of the impact that their attitudes and the context in which they are embedded have on their judgments and decisions

Rhetoric and reality surrounding care proceedings: family justice under strain

NoSince mid-2000 a number of important changes to policy, legislation, government guidance and practice directions have been introduced in child-protection practice. These changes have the intention of placing children and families at the heart of decision-making with regard to judgements about their future. Central to these changes is the commitment to reducing delay in the conduct and resolution of cases so that outcomes for children are optimised, and costs and resources are effectively managed. Proposed legislation to impose a six-month time limit for the completion of care cases emphasises the drive to frontload work with children and families pre-proceedings. This paper explores the issues surrounding the boundary of decision-making between the courts and the local authority following the publication of the Family justice review. It considers the implications of making a greater number of highly consequential decisions within administrative rather than judicial settings, and explores the rights of children and parents within such decision-making processes. Whilst the intention of policy changes may be laudable, it is argued, in line with Munro that a number of obstacles may result in less desirable outcomes for children