Who is “The Child”? Best Interests and Individuality of Children in Discretionary Decision-Making

While the substantiation of “best interests” has received much attention, the question of how “the child” is conceptualised to ensure any action taken or decision made is in the particular child’s best interests has been largely neglected. In this paper, I argue that the lack of robust understanding of who “the child” is, means that we continue to make many generalisations and category-based assumptions in determining the child’s best interests. In addressing the challenge of doing right by the individual child, I propose a three-step approach based on a theoretical model of the child that avoids presumptions about child-typical needs and insists on an assessment of the child’s individual characteristics, needs, qualities and circumstances, making it the only conceptualisation fully meeting the child centrism criterion required by children’s rights as determined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.publishedVersio

Breaking the cycle: Solidarity with care-leaver mothers

Many child protection cases involve care-experienced mothers, which reveals a continuous cycle of mothers who lose their children to social services after having been in state care themselves as children. While the importance of protecting children requires little explanation and forms the justificatory basis for child protection interventions, it is important to remember that care-experienced mothers were once children entrusted to the state’s care, and who arguably have been failed by the statein that their parenting opportunities are significantly reduced. This paper aims to address this underexplored dilemma between protecting children and safeguarding mothering opportunities for care-experienced mothers. Appealing to the concept of solidarity, I arguethat the state has an obligation to increase its compensatory efforts to secure the right of care-experienced women to not only become parents but to be able to beparents, with the aim of breaking the cycle of care experience.publishedVersio

Digital twins and the ethics of health decision-making concerning children

In this perspective, we explore from an ethical perspective the opportunities and challenges for decision-making concerning children if digital twins (DTs) were to be used to provide better information about their health status as a basis for proxy decision-making. We note a sense of urgency due to the speed of progress and implementation of this advancing technology and argue that bringing a solid conceptual basis into the development process is of utmost importance for the effective protection of children’s rights and interests.publishedVersio

Creating ‘family’ in adoption from care

Adoption may be defined as ‘the legal process through which the state establishes a parental relationship, with all its attendant rights and duties, between a child and a (set of) parent(s) where there exists no previous procreative relationship’ . In adoptions from care, state intervention effectively converts an established, or nascent, adult– child relationship into ‘family’ in the legal sense. From the state’s perspective, adoption thus entails the transfer of parental responsibilities for a child in public care to a private family unit, enabling the state to permanently delegate its duties towards a child to this new unit. This seemingly straightforward legal act raises deeper philosophical questions relating to such state ‘family creation’, particularly when the child’s perspective is taken. Such a child- centric approach normatively regards children as equal moral beings, who ought to be included in actions concerning them, regardless of their capacity to form and express an opinion. Accordingly, adoption from care can be described as a moral decision, aimed at doing what is in the child’s best interests. The purpose of this chapter is to explore a suspicion of a lack of child- centrism in adoption from care practice, and to illustrate how adopted children’s rights are inferior to those of their non- adopted peers. This will shed light on a practice currently lacking transparency and accountability and will increase our understanding of how we fail to treat children as equal moral individuals in decision- making that severely impacts children’s lives

Breaking the Cycle: Solidarity with care-leaver mothers

A significant proportion of child protection cases involve care-experienced mothers, which reveals a continuous cycle of mothers who lose their children to social services after having been in state care themselves as children. While the importance of protecting children requires little explanation and forms the justificatory basis for child protection interventions, it is important to remember that care-experienced mothers were once children entrusted to the state’s care, and who arguably have been failed by the state in that their parenting opportunities are significantly reduced. This paper aims to address this underexplored dilemma between protecting children and safeguarding mothering opportunities for care-experienced mothers. Appealing to the concept of solidarity, I argue that the state has an obligation to increase its compensatory efforts to secure the right of care-experienced women to not only become parents but to be able to be parents, with the aim of breaking the cycle of care experience

Who is ‘the child’? Best interests and individuality of children in discretionary decision-making

While the substantiation of “best interests” has received much attention, the question of how “the child” is conceptualised to ensure any action taken or decision made is in the particular child’s best interests has been largely neglected. In this paper, I argue that the lack of robust understanding of who “the child” is means that we continue to make many generalisations and category-based assumptions in determining the child’s best interests. In addressing the challenge of doing right by the individual child, I propose a three-step approach based on a theoretical model of the child that avoids presumptions about child-typical needs and insists on an assessment of the child’s individual characteristics, needs, qualities, and circumstances, making it the only conceptualisation fully meeting the child centrism criterion required by children’s rights as determined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

Child’s best interest in child protection legislation of 44 jurisdictions

publishedVersio

The Invisible Child. A Comparative Study of Newborn Removal Judgments from a Child Equality Perspective (CEP)

We know little about how children are portrayed in care order cases. Using a Child Equality Perspective (cep), which demands the child’s presence in proceedings even for children who are not capable of partaking fully in the decision-making process, we examine a sample of 216 judgments from 8 countries involving 220 infants. Our study reveals that the children remain largely invisible, but with clear country differences. Children’s invisibility constitutes a fundamental obstacle for children being “equal” in the judgments that will shape the child’s future. This invisibility raises concerns about the quality of the judicial decisions about the child’s best interest.publishedVersio