PROTECTING OUR CHILDREN — CONFUSION AND CONCERN
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1984.tb00560.x |
| Author | D. F. H. PHEBY |
| Published date | 01 June 1984 |
| Date | 01 June 1984 |
NOTES
AND
SURVEYS
229
-
.
1984b. 'Statistical information systems and management',
Organization Studies.
Thomas, Ray and Ann Stanyer. 1984.
Towards statistics for policy making.
(Social Sciences Occa-
sional Paper) The Open University.
(Also
to
be
published
in
Social Policy and Administration
in
1984.)
PROTECTING
OUR
CHILDREN
-
CONFUSION
AND
CONCERN
Where legislation extends substantially the field of public responsibility its
consequences can rarely
be
predicted with certainty.
It
therefore becomes necessary
at times to draw attention to the unintended consequences
of
such legislation, since
these may
be
highly counter-productive. The law pertaining to children
is
one such
field, where the post-war period has witnessed a
flurry
of legislative activity
without parallel since the early
1890s.
This essay is particularly concerned with the
effects on professional practice
of
these legislative developments, and with their
implications for the rights
of
individuals and professional confidentiality.
Beginning with the 1944 Education Act and the Children Act
of
1948, as well
as the
Nurseries
and Child-Minders Act of the same year, new legislation gathered
momentum with the Children Act, 1958 and the Adoption Act, 1958. The Children
and Young Persons Acts of 1963 and 1969 respectively obliged local authorities
to reduce the need for children to be received into care and codified the law on
care proceedings (Rawstron 1980), while the Family Law Reform Act of 1969 and
the Administration
of
Justice Act, 1970 developed the law relating to wardship
proceedings.
Dunng
the 1970s a great many measures
affecting
the
rights
of
children
reached the statute book, including the Guardianship
of
Minors Act, 1971, the
Guardianship Act, 1973, the Matrimonial Causes Act, 1973, the Children Act,
1975, the Adoption Act, 1976, and the Domestic Proceedings and Magistrates'
Courts Act, 1978. Much legislation was consolidated by the Child Care Act, 1980,
and other recent measures include the Foster Children Act, 1980 (Rawstron 1980).
A good deal
of
this legislation arose directly out of contemporaneous concern
about aspects of child care. Thus the Children Act, 1948 reflected concern about
the conditions of children in residential care, highlighted in the Curtis Report of
1946 (Freeman
1981),
while some of the 1970s legislation reflected great anxiety
following the tragic deaths
of
a number
of
children, including Maria Colwell and
Susan Auckland, at
the
hands
of
parents. While Parliament cannot appear impotent
in the face
of
such circumstances, the fact that legislation has tended to
be
reactive
in nature, to follow particular situations, and to reflect changes in social attitudes,
has resulted in a piecemeal
ad
hoc
approach
in
which underlyirg strategy is difficult
to discern. Consequently, there has been a substantial fragmentation of the rights
of families. Since 1969, for example, no fewer than eleven ways in which a child
can come into the care of a local authority have been enacted in legislation
(Maidment 1981).
This increase
in
the role of public authorities has brought with it an erosion
This note was a commended entry in the
1983
Haldane
Essay
Competition.
Public Administration
Vol.
Summer 1984 (229-236)
0
1984
Royal Institute
of
Public Administration
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