Children and the Law.

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Anonymity No: 237494

Faculty of Law                

UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

FACULTY OF LAW

COURSEWORK FOR (Children and the Law)

AUTHOR -        (237494)

DATE - _                                (6th May 2003)

SEMINAR GROUP -        (5)

SEMINAR TUTOR -        (Sophie Tarassenko)

SCHEME -                        (LG2)

 

Ruth is a heroin addict and works as a prostitute to pay for her addiction. She has two children, Daniel aged 13, and Ellie aged 2.  Ruth has never been married, nor has she ever entered into a parental responsibility agreement with either of the children’s fathers. She does not know who Daniel’s father is.  Ellie’s father is also a heroin addict.  He has no interest in his daughter.

Ruth loves her children.  She has, however, been known to disappear for days at a time, leaving them alone, or with total strangers.  Sometimes the house is filthy and there is no food. She hates social services and will often refuse to allow them into the house.

The children are on the child protection register and the social worker, Carrie, does not feel that anything has been achieved.  If anything, the situation is getting worse, not better, and Ruth has recently threatened her. She thinks that both children should be in foster care.   She has told Ruth that if she does not place them in voluntary foster care, she will go to Court and get an order.

Ruth’s mother, Sandra, helps Ruth with the children, and Ellie often stays with her when things get bad.  Sandra would like them to come and live with her rather than going into care, but does not think that she can control Daniel, as he will not do what he is told. She would also need help with Ellie, as she finds looking after a two year old exhausting.

The children want to stay together, and Daniel wants to stay with his Mum, because he believes that he ought to look after her.  He often plays truant from school, because he worries about his mother, and goes home to check she is OK.  He also looks after Ellie.  Ruth is willing to go into rehabilitation for her drug habit.  She has been in rehabilitation before (several years ago) but only managed to stay off drugs for a few months.  


Carrie thinks that the children should be placed in foster care separately, and that a permanent home should be found for Ellie in the long term. She thinks that Daniel is too old to find a new permanent family, and so there should be some attempt to return him to his mother’s care if she can address her drug habit. If not, he should remain looked after by the local authority until she can demonstrate an ability to provide a more appropriate home environment for him.

Advise Ruth as to what powers the Local Authority has in terms of protection for the children.  Advise as to both the short term and long term options.   (You are not required to consider adoption)


In answering this question, the relevant statute that applies is the Children Act 1989 which deals with the local authorities and their powers of intervention.  In order for the child to be placed into the care of the local authority the child has to be considered as being ‘in need’ which section 17(10) of the act defines as being a child who requires local authority services to maintain or achieve a reasonable standard of health or development; or whose health or development will be significantly or further impaired without services or who is disabled. In deciding this, section 31 (2) of the Children Act which sets out the threshold criteria as a two part test needs to be satisfied.  The first part of the test is that there has to be significant harm and the second part being that the causation of this harm is the level of care not being reasonable.  The definitions of these words are set out in s.31 (9) of the Act which defines ‘harm’ as being ill treatment or the impairment of health and development.  The development in question can be physical, intellectual, emotional, social or behavioural development.  In this case it could be said that Daniel and Ellie are children ‘in need’ as their development is being impaired by Ruth’s actions.  There is already evidence of Daniel’s behaviour being impaired by him truanting from school.  In the case of Re O (care proceedings: education) (1992) the court recognised that failure to receive education can amount to significant harm.  Daniel is also subject to emotional impairment by him being saddled with the burden of taking care of his sister and his mother.  Section 31(9) also defines that the ill treatment doesn’t have to be physical and so the fact that Ruth hasn’t been physically abusive to the children shouldn’t matter, as going off and leaving them alone for days still falls under the category of ill treatment.  The second part of the threshold criteria set out in s.31 (2), that the causation of the significant harm is that the level of care given is not reasonable has also been satisfied.  This is judged against the normal physical and emotional care that a reasonable parent would give.  Here we can clearly see that the care Ruth is giving is not what a reasonable parent would give and so she is the cause of the significant harm her children are suffering.  Now that s.31 (2) has been satisfied the local authority are under a duty to act and provide adequate services to Daniel and Ellie. In order to reassure the client, Ruth however it could be pointed out to her that local authority intervention doesn’t necessarily equal disastrous consequences as government guidance alongside the act indicates that the objective of any partnership between families and professions must be the protection and welfare of the child…From the outset, workers should consider the possibility of a partnership with each family based on mutual trust, joint decision making and willingness to listen to families and capitalise on their strengths.  So the intervention of the local authority doesn’t mean Ruth loses her parental rights or an input into what happens to the children.

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Once the local authority has decided to intervene the next step would be to look at the mode of intervention. There are a number of short and long term options available to the local authority.  The first and most immediate would be an Emergency Protection Order (EPO) which is governed by s.44 of the Children Act.  The purpose of this order is to enable Daniel and Ellie to be provided with immediate short term protection in a genuine emergency and it also gives the local authority limited parental responsibility so they can adequately investigate the situation and have the power ...

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