Care Proceedings under the 1989 Children Act: Rhetoric and Reality

Abstract

SummaryAmong the most important changes that it was hoped would flow from the 1989 Children Act were, firstly, a reduction in delay in care proceedings, since this was recognised to be harmful to children and, secondly, a shift away from the use of compulsion towards working in partnership. In this article Bridget McKeigue and Chris Beckett demonstrate that, in both respects, the Act has not only failed to deliver, but been followed by rapid change in the opposite direction to the one hoped for. However many commentators, both within and outside of government, continue to speak of the Act as if it had been a success. The article considers a series of characteristic rhetorical manoeuvres which seem to allow the Act's failings to be passed over in much of this discourse. They conclude that progress is more likely to be made if the Act's failure to deliver is frankly confronted. Introduction:If a commentator in 1992 had suggested that over the next decade the number of care orders made per year would triple and the average duration of care orders would more than double, she would surely have faced a chorus of protest. The 1989 Children Act, she would have been told, was designed precisely to prevent court delay and to steer local authorities away as far as possible from the adversarial approach which care proceedings represent.Described by the then Lord Chancellor as 'the most comprehensive and far-reaching reform of child care law which has come before parliament in living memory ' (Hansard, HoL Debates, 6 th December, 1988, Col. 488), the 1989 Act was the first piece of childcare legislation to specifically state as a basic principle -second only to the 'welfare principle' itself among just five basic principles enshrined in the Act's first section -that delay 'is likely to prejudice the welfare of the child' (1989 Children Act, s 1 (2)). And, while the Act does October, 1991, which greeted the newly implemented Act as 'a fundamental shift from the adversarial legal system. The new emphasis is away from courts imposing solutions or orders and towards parents, relatives and local authorities working in partnership…consensus not conflict…. The Act should mean fewer court orders.'As it has turned out however, our hypothetical commentator would have been right and her critics would have been wrong. As we will show, about three times as many care orders were made in 2001 as in 1992, while the average set of care proceedings took more than twice as long. Nevertheless the 1989 Children Act continues quite frequently to be described as a groundbreaking piece of legislation which has succeeded in its main objectives.Our aim in this article is firstly to bring together information about the length and duration of care proceedings, updating earlier articles here by Beckett (2001a, b), and secondly to examine some of the rhetoric within which discussion of the Children Act is characteristically couched. Our suggestion is that the net effect of this rhetoric is to obscure the extent to which the increased use of compulsio...

Your Shout! Looked After Children's Perspectives on the Children Act 1989

“…Between 2001 and 2003-contrary to the view expressed, for example, by McKeigue and Beckett (2004) that serious debate on the 1989 Act was not taking place-there were discussions amongst policy makers, practitioners and pressure groups as to whether major changes should be made in the way that court and local authority services to vulnerable children should be provided. As a contribution to this debate, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) initiated a review of how the 1989 Act was working in practice.…”

Revisiting children ‘home on trial’ in the context of current concerns about the costs and effectiveness of the looked‐after children system: findings from an exploratory study

“…The present study has been prompted by current debates about the burgeoning costs associated with child care proceedings and the looked‐after children's system (LAC, Department for Constitutional Affairs & Department for Education and Skills 2006). Since the implementation of the Children Act 1989 and contrary to expectations, the number of applications and care orders made has significantly risen and this has considerable resource implications (Beckett 2001; McKeigue & Beckett 2004; Brophy 2006; Department for Constitutional Affairs & Department for Education and Skills 2006). Rising numbers of care proceedings have led to increased demands on local authority expenditure, increased costs associated with the running of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, a steadily rising budget associated with the operation of the judiciary and court service and increased demands on the legal aid budget (Department for Constitutional Affairs & Department for Education and Skills 2006).…”

Coming to conclusions: social workers’ perceptions of the decision‐making process in care proceedings

“…(Based on statistics for each level of court supplied to the authors by the Department for Constitutional Affairs. These have been weighted according to the proportion of public law children’s cases heard at each level in the given year, using the annual Judicial Statistics published by the Department for Constitutional Affairs: see McKeigue & Beckett 2004, for details of method.)…”

“…Children and parents were waiting 47 weeks in 2002 (see Fig. 2), compared with 24 weeks in 1993 (McKeigue & Beckett 2004). (The mean duration of care proceedings was 14.2 weeks between 1986 and 1989 and just 5.9 weeks over the previous 3 years; Thomas et al .…”