Opening the floodgates: the price of modernisation of child law
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.5042/jcs.2010.0302 |
| Pages | 60-63 |
| Date | 30 June 2010 |
| Published date | 30 June 2010 |
| Author | Jonathan Whybrow |
| Subject Matter | Education,Health & social care,Sociology |
Journal of Children’s Ser vices • V olume 5 Issue 2 • June 2010 © Pier P rofessional Ltd
60
Abstract
The Children Act 1989 forms a modern and integrated legal framework for children
proceedings. A victim of its own success, the Act has brought child care law into the
spotlight, with more public law cases heard in judge courts and the proceedings making great
demands of public funds in social work and legal spheres. There is a need to simplify the
process and make more urgent the resolution of cases to better protect children in a timely
way.
Key words
Children Act 1989; rights of children and families; legal aid costs; prevention of delay
Over the next 20 years child care legal practice
moved from predominantly male criminal lawyers
who also conducted juvenile crime cases to the
more female membership of the Solicitors Family
Law Association (now Resolution) and Family Law
Bar Association. What had been a minority subject
in family law became the mainstay of the family
law legal aid system.
Before the Children Act 1989 there were
occasional reported cases often at High Court
level after appeals on points of law. Since the
mid-1990s, fed by the success of the publication
Children Law and Practice (Hershman & MacFarlane)
and Family Law Reports, practitioners have
been inundated by an ever-increasing number of
appellate court decisions, many in the House of
Lords (now Supreme Court), as child law became
a fertile career path for the family bar.
If the gentrification of child law was an
unintended consequence of the Children Act 1989,
what has been the price? Attempts to reduce the
The Children Act 1989 was the first comprehensive
reform of civil child law. It built on jurisprudence
emanating from the European Court of Human
Rights where the pre-existing child law was found
wanting, particularly in the protection afforded to
an individual’s family life.
It was inspired by greater recognition of the rights
of children, their parents and family including de
facto carers. The design was of an integrated
private and public law system, a joined-up code of
orders, suitable for most if not all types of family
disputes over children and local authority child
protection measures short of adoption.
Rather than construct a Family Court to deliver
the new law, the Act gave concurrent jurisdiction
to the High Court, county courts and magistrates’
courts (renamed family proceedings courts).
Perhaps an unexpected effect of this reform was to
take child law out of the juvenile court (presided
over by mainly lay magistrates) into the judges’
courts (where many would say it belongs).
Opening the floodgates: the
price of modernisation of
child law
Jonathan Whybrow
Children Panel Solicitor, UK
10.5042/jcs.2010.0302
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