News Release

Children Act 'charter for abuse'

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMJ

Is the Children Act failing severely abused and neglected children? 2000;82:192-6

The Children Act is failing to protect children from severe abuse and neglect, concludes a stringent critique in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. Dubbed a "charter for abuse" by many of those working in the field, doctors who specialise in child protection work are said to be "near despair" about the repercussions of the 1990 Act.

In the first four years following the Act's appearance on the statute books, the number of children placed in care fell by a third, from 60,000 in 1991 to 40,000 in 1995. It is unlikely that children were needlessly being taken into care before 1990, suggest the authors, or that the prevalence of abuse plummeted in four years. Rather, they contend that social workers have been much more reluctant to intervene.

The authors argue that the Act has shifted the emphasis of protection towards rehabilitation, in the belief that the interests of children are best served by keeping the family unit together while lengthy assessments of the situation are made. "In the absence of evidence," say the authors, "this resurgence of blood link ideology should be regarded as based on nothing stronger than a mixture of sentiment, political convenience, superstition, and wishful thinking."

They also contend that more proof is now required for a Care Order, which allows social services to remove children from the cause of their abuse, than used to be the case. Additional bouts of abuse need to take place as confirmatory evidence, says the authors. Consequently, when a child does come into care "he or she is more emotionally damaged, older, and consequently harder to place."

The Act promotes the idea of partnership, effectively giving parents more power, say the authors. This is all very well, they contend, but it serves to trivialise child abuse by decriminalising it. "You do not enter into partnership with criminals during the investigation of a crime until the crime has stopped and the criminal has confessed and expressed remorse." The Act also promotes the concept of parental responsibility as a collection of duties and rights, but in abusing or neglecting their children, say the authors, parents have failed in the discharge of their duties and should lose some, if not all, of their rights.

The Cleveland crisis of 1987-8, lobbying by parents' rights groups, and a populist reaction to the whole issue of child abuse by politicians have all contributed to the tone of the Act, and the reluctance of social services to intervene, conclude the authors. What about the rights of abused children?, they ask.

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Contact:

Dr Nigel Speight, Department of Paediatrics, Dryburn Hospital, Durham.


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