Child Welfare Legislation Research Articles

A birth certificate is not a biological property title: Has an insidiously persistent idea finally reached its use-by date?

Particularly in western societies, the notion that children are biological property has been a strongly implicit idea for many generations. It has therefore also been an idea that has implicitly pervaded our child welfare legislation and practice for generations, despite frequent legal rhetoric about the rights of the child. In this paper, the author traces the negative effects on welfare practice that this notion of children as property has had over the last half century. In doing so, the author calls not only on his professional experience, but also on his personal experience as a foster, adoptive and permanent care parent. Some provisions within the new Victorian child protection legislation are examined to gauge their capacity to address the negative effects on practice of this persistent notion, and reason found for some guarded optimism.

Challenges of Grandparent Custody of Children at Risk in New Zealand

The phenomenon of grandparents assuming responsibility for raising their grandchildren is growing internationally. The New Zealand Children Young Persons and Their Families Act (1989) led international child welfare legislation in mandating extended family placement for children needing care. The Act responded to Maori1 concerns that Maori children were being disproportionately placed with European caregivers. Maori children are still overrepresented in state care statistics; however, they are almost twice as likely to be placed with grandparents or other extended family than are European children. Psychological, cultural, legal, and socioeconomic factors impact on how kinship care is experienced. The emphasis of this research was qualitative,2 with a primary view of accessibility for the participant group and shaping social work policy and practice with these families.

The Children (Northern Ireland) Order: A Perspective from the United States

In this paper, I identify how the child welfare challenges of Northern Ireland are partially similar to, and partially different from, those in the United States. To do so, I provide a discussion of current US child welfare legislation, critical prevailing themes, and observations regarding the similarities and differences with Northern Ireland legislation and child care practice. I outline the challenges that appear to be similar as both countries struggle to move toward systems that emphasize support for families rather than primarily child protection. Differences, too, in approaches and context are identified and discussed.

Aboriginal child placement principle and family group conferences

Throughout the twentieth century, Aboriginal children have been removed from their family and cultural networks under a range of government policies that have professed to be ‘in their best interests’. This article outlines the historical context to the development of the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle, which is currently the operating principle for all States and Territories in Australia when child welfare services have engaged with Aboriginal families and there is likelihood that a child may be removed. Because of problems with the implementation of the Principle, the option of family group conferences is suggested as a way of ensuring the objectives of the Principle are still met. Family Group Conferences originated in New Zealand initially as a response to the over-representation of Maori children in the substitute care system, and have since been part of child welfare legislation in that country for both Maori and non-Maori families since 1989. The application of the New Zealand model to working with Indigenous Australians will be discussed, along with a recommendation for this form of empowering practice to be considered more comprehensively as a family decision-making strategy within the field of child protection.

IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES

This article will examine several of the more difficult issues raised by the Freeman case, including the potential conflict between a parent's rights and a child's rights, the concern over legislative intervention in family autonomy, and the obvious struggle the courts are having in making consistent decisions in this area. The focus will be on Canadian child welfare legislation, with particular emphasis on the Nova Scotia legislation, as it relates to the refusal to consent to the medical treatment of a child. Similarly, the case law considered will also be primarily Canadian. The article will concentrate on situations in which the withholding of medical treatment would threaten the life of a child and will discuss the withholding of treatment as it relates to an unborn child, a mentally and/or physically challenged child, and a normal child.

PREVENTING JUDICIALLY MANDATED ORPHANS

The courts intrude into the sancity of family relationships too often, especially with respect to impoverished families. Many circumtances found in such families, including economic factors, employment, and drug and alcohol abuse, are prevalent in poor communities. Instead of stripping children from their parents, the courts should aid families by targeting common problems and helping to preserve the parent-child relationship. This article focuses on the conflicting interests comprising the child protective system, some federal and state child welfare legislation, the idea of increasing the standard of proof in termination Not only is that proceedings, and the constitutionality of relecant legislation and its implementation. Not only is that legislation unconstitutional, but it is unfair to impovershed families, and not completely ineffective at reaching its goal.

Integrating Family Visitation and Risk Evaluation: A Practical Bonding Model for Decision Makers

The number of children in foster care remains high, and most disturbing are the numbers of children whose abuse continues after system intervention. Faced by these challenges, child welfare legislation and policy have shifted away from the earlier standard of “reasonable efforts” toward reunification for children in foster care to a standard in which “the best interests of the child” have priority. The new goal calls for greater use of assessment tools in locating those families deemed to be “at risk” for further abuse. Here, we apply a family bonding perspective to address the practical side of risk assessment for those children already in foster care. We present a conceptual model that attaches numerical value to the various components of the parent–child bond and demonstrate how the model can be operationalized during supervised visitations. Using data from a family visitation center, we demonstrate the model's potential for interagency collaboration in the permanency placement decision‐making process.

Children of the Pátria: Representations of Childhood and Welfare State Ideologies at the 1922 Rio de Janeiro International Centennial Exposition

The child does not only belong to the family .... Child rearing is no longer purely a question of family order, it embraces a multitude of interests for the social order .... The problem of childhood is the greatest national dilemma.Brazilian hygienist Dr. Alfredo Ferreira de Magalhães proclaimed his view of child welfare to an elite audience of medical, legal, political, military, and business leaders during the opening ceremonies at the 1922 First Brazilian Congress for the Protection of Childhood held in Rio de Janeiro. For the first time in Brazil, children had become a distinct focus of teachers, lawyers, military leaders, politicians, police, priests, judges, journalists, and novelists who struggled to incorporate liberal and positivistic ideas into public policies and institutions. Members of all classes of Brazilian society had cared for children and had lamented high rates of infant mortality well before the turn of the century. The 1920s movement, however, differed significantly from previous approaches to child welfare in Brazil. This was the first time that elites from such a wide variety of professions and positions of power insisted that the state assume responsibility for funding, implementing, and enforcing child welfare legislation and institutions.

Social Control and Emancipation ? Ambiguities in Child Welfare

Child welfare may be regarded either as a tool used by the authorities to exercise social control over family life, or as a weapon supporting the cause of children, striving to emancipate them from both parental and societal neglect or oppression. Research into Norwegian child welfare in the period since the Second World War reveals an ambiguous picture: the intervention of the state into family life signals both tightening social control of all family members and emancipation of the less powerful from patriarchal rule. As the rights and needs of children are considered more important, the control of parents, especially the mother, is increased. The central position of children and their interests have been strengthened in child welfare legislation. However, it is not the child, but the child welfare officials who define what is 'in the best interest of the child'. Post-war development has not granted children autonomy. Child welfare legislation is still mainly paternalistic. In child welfare casework, there is a danger that the lived experience of the child never emerges from the shadows cast by the interaction between adults. In relation to older children who came in contact with child welfare primarily because of their own problem behaviour, the ambiguity of emancipation and control has taken a somewhat different shape. The authorities wanted to keep these children out of prison. Humanitarian considerations, however, have been coupled with hopes of more effective crime prevention. In the postwar years, misbehaving children were also embraced by the increasing importance of 'the best interest of the child' as the main objective in child welfare decisions. In order to secure both emancipation and control, 'the best interest of the child' and the state's interest in preventing crime had to be understood as one and the same.

Cutural origins of the contemporary family group conference

Most international scholars acknowledge that contemporary practices with the Family Group Conference have their origins in cultural traditions that frame New Zealand's child welfare legislation (Pennell and Burford, 1995; Hudson et al., 1996; Marsh and Crow, 1997). The Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act (1989) was the first legislation in the Western world to require that Family Group Conferences be convened prior to court consideration of state intervention in the care of children or young people (Wilcox et al., 1991). Over the ensuing decade, Family Group Conferences have become the focus of international attention and are now part of professional practice in most Western countries. This is not surprising, given the way Family Group Conferences help to empower families towards greater participation in decisions concerning the care of their children (Connolly, 1994).

Children, Parents and the State: The Children Act, 1908

SUMMARY: This article examines the first major consolidating piece of child welfare legislation in Britain, the 1908 Children Act. The focus is on the relationship established between child, parent, and state. Contemporary reasons for the need for this re‐ordered relationship are suggested, but it is also argued that in certain respects parallels can be found between the Edwardian Act and that of 1989. This in turn suggests the persistence of certain issues in child welfare, and especially that of the division of responsibilities for the care of children between parents and State.

Assessing the condition of children

Proposed child welfare legislation challenges states to initiate new programs to help children who have been neglected, abused, or abandoned by their parents. This paper describes ways to appraise the condition of children and the functioning of families in order to evaluate the effects of child welfare reform efforts. The assessment approach grows out of a “whole child” perspective, encompassing physical health, cognitive development, emotional well-being, and moral development and social behavior. Specific measures to assess these aspects of child development are described, most of which have shown meaningful differences between groups in large-scale studies. However, child welfare situations present special challenges: the difficulty of reliably assessing the developmental status of young children; applicability of measures to low-income and minority children and very dysfunctional families; and the problem of obtaining accurate, unbiased information from parents. Several research strategies are proposed to combat these difficulties. One promising development for the future of child welfare evaluations is that a number of these strategies have been incorporated into large-scale, longitudinal evaluation studies of welfare-to-work, child care, and integrated service delivery programs.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child: How fares Victorian law and practice?

On the 2nd of September this year, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the Assembly in November 1989, came into force under international law, 30 days after the lodgment of the 20th instrument of ratification (by which time 31 countries had deposited ratifications). Shortly prior to that date, on 22 August, after some public controversy about the matter, Australia had determined to sign the Convention. The Convention, which stemmed from the 1979 International Year of the Child, expanded and elaborated within an international treaty, rights first enunciated (in non-binding form) in the 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child. It applies to a person under the age of 18.Over 5 years ago, the Report of the Child Welfare Practice and Legislation Review Committee was published. That report - Equity and Social Justice for children families and communities, took, as one of its foundation principles, the proposition that Victorian law and practice should reflect internationally accepted principles of human and civil rights of children.

‘Boy, 15, Divorces Parent’: Irreconcilable Difference Applications in Victoria

The provision in Victoria's child welfare legislation, which allows parents or children to apply to the Children's Court on the ground of irreconcilable differences, is examined in the light of a much publicized case in Melbourne. Similar legislation exists elsewhere in Australia, and in New Zealand. The number of irreconcilable difference applications has declined in recent years due to the provision of counselling. A few cases still reach court. It is argued that legal proceedings serve little useful function. Cases of family breakdown are better handled by the provision of services including alternative accommodation, without a change in the child's legal status.

Colonially inspired child welfare legislation and the dilemmas of reform in Papua New Guinea

Colonially inspired child welfare legislation and the dilemmas of reform in Papua New Guinea

Child Welfare Legislation in Denmark: Trends in Child Welfare over the Past Decade

AbstractThis paper deals with the Danish Child Welfare Law, which was passed in 1974 as part of an integrated welfare law aiming at decentralization of decision making in local government, and maximum citizen participation.The law provides for counselling, recommendations and injunctions in connection with counselling, appointment of personal guidance officers, and taking children into care. The greater part of decision making is made in co-operation with parents. The few cases of removal of a child from the home without parental consent are conducted under the auspices of the local council welfare committee, presided over by a judge. Parents are given access and must be heard. Parents have wide rights of appeal.

Reforming child welfare: Diverting by-ways on the road to utopia?

This article, written from a less than detached standpoint by the chairperson of the body concerned, takes the recently completed review of child welfare practice and legislation in the Australian State of Victoria, as a case study of the contours, and of the factors which shape, law reform in areas of social policy. Substantive issues dealt with in the body of the Report1 will not be addressed here. Rather, the article considers some of the reasons which might explain why the task was not entrusted to one of the existing structures for the review of law and social policy in this State, and it canvasses some of the features which may make review by such a free-standing committee the preferred approach when reviewing social policy. The main theme to be explored is that of the role of reviews in accelerating (or inhibiting) the process of change in a legal, welfare practice and public policy context. To this end the article addresses such matters as: the significance of the composition of the review body; its techniques of consultation with the public and with government; its dealings with government and major centres of power; and related matters which bear on its capacity to discharge its basic mandate. The contextual pressures which favour system inertia, or which may transform reform measures into something other than what was intended by the proponents of change, will also be alluded to. It will be argued that the model of expert independent committee suffers from a vulnerability to the effects of external factors and relationships. These may leach away much of its capacity to undertake a thorough, detached evaluation of its specified field, and preclude it from building up significant momentum for change. Nevertheless, it is contended that these weak points are capable of being shored up. As a consequence it is concluded that this model is superior to its competitors when a significant area of social policy is thought to be ripe for evaluation and change.

The Three R'S in Child Welfare—Rights, Responsibilites and Rhetoric

AbstractThis paper is an edited version of an address given at a seminar on ‘Future Directions in Child Welfare’ held at Monash University in May 1985. The seminar's aim was to facilitate discussion of the Victorian Child Welfare Legislation and Practice Review Report (The Carney Report).

Federal/State Responsibility for Child Welfare Services

In Victoria at the present time a major review is being undertaken into child welfare practice and legislation. The importance of this task is two-fold. Not only do children have to gain from a sensitive and workable final Report, but families too could find that they will be offered the support they need to assist in the difficult task of raising children today. It is hoped that the Review Committee will not concentrate solely on the rights of the child, but will also give due recognition to the rights of the family to a caring and protective environment.The Victorian Government was the first state government to adopt a family policy approach to dealing with the child. This was confirmed by the Norgard Report (1976) and formed the basis of a submission by the Victorian Minister of Social Welfare to the Federal Minister of Social Security (1977) which culminated in the Family Support Services Scheme being set up the following year. This joint federal/state program officially recognised the interaction of children’s rights and needs with those of their parents.

Child Welfare Practice and Legislation Review Committee

Child Welfare Practice and Legislation Review Committee