Justice, speed and thoroughness in child protection court proceedings: Messages from England

Dickens, Jonathan; Beckett, Chris; Bailey, Sue

doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2014.08.010

Cited by 8 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…There are typically two types of hearing: the adjudicatory or “fact‐finding” hearing and the dispositional hearing, which decides the placement of the child (with birth parents, kinship care, foster care, etc. ; Dickens et al, ; Križ et al, ). The adjudicatory and the dispositional hearing may take place separately or at the same time (Križ et al, ).…”

Section: Background: Removal Proceedings In the Systems Of The Four Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These studies provide an important contribution of knowledge to the field of child welfare, professional judgement, and decision‐making in general. However, the main part of the empirical research has focused on decision‐making at the level of child welfare agencies, with only a few empirical studies examining decision‐making in courts (e.g., Ellett & Steib, ; Summers & Darnell, ; Dickens, Beckett, & Bailey, ; Magnussen & Skivenes, ). The difficulties and challenges involved in making the “right” decision in child protection are pointed out numerous times in the literature (Mnookin & Szwed, ; Elster, ; Breen, ; Skivenes, ), and examinations of the public trust level possibly reflect this.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Improving decision‐making in care order proceedings: A multijurisdictional study of court decision‐makers' viewpoints

Skivenes

Tonheim

2018

Child & Family Social Work

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Child welfare removals of children are among the most invasive decisions a state can make toward its citizens, and typically it is the courts that make these decisions. These interventions are regularly exposed to criticism. In this paper, we examine if and how care order proceedings could be improved in England, Finland, Norway, and California, USA. We have asked the judiciary decision‐makers about their view on what should be improved. Our findings show that the organization of the proceedings, including time and staff, are identified as issues in all four systems. Furthermore, the preparations by the child welfare agency are also mentioned as an issue, for English, Finnish, and Californian decision‐makers. Very few decision‐makers indicate features related to the individual, situational, and contextual dimensions, which is interesting since this would be expected from organization theory. The strong call for change in the way proceedings are organized indicates a need for modernization as well as better use of available competency from child development experts. The respondents focus on the elements that a decision‐maker has direct experience with and knowledge about, and this is indeed worth noting for policymakers in the four systems.

show abstract

Section: Background: Removal Proceedings In the Systems Of The Four Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving decision‐making in care order proceedings: A multijurisdictional study of court decision‐makers' viewpoints

Skivenes

Tonheim

2018

Child & Family Social Work

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…There have been repeated efforts since then to increase the use of pre-court assessments, but there are continuing debates about how far these could, or should, replace court-ordered assessments (see Brown et al, 2015). The perceived need for independent assessments, whether before or during court proceedings, is partly to ensure thoroughness and fairness for the parents, but also because of mistrust about the quality of local authority social workers' assessments (Family Justice Review, 2011;Dickens et al, 2014;Dickens and Masson, 2016). However, there have also been criticisms of the quality of some of these independent assessments.…”

Section: Englandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Workers and Independent Experts in Child Protection Decision Making: Messages from an Intercountry Comparative Study

Dickens

Berrick

Pösö

et al. 2016

The British Journal of Social Work

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper draws on an international comparative study of social work decision-making in cases that are on the edge of care order proceedings, involving child protection workers from Finland, Norway, England and the USA (California). It focuses on workers' responses in an on-line questionnaire, to questions about the use of independent experts to inform their decisions about whether or not to take a case to court. All the countries try to avoid taking cases to court if possible, but the ways they do this vary considerably. The findings show the different meanings and implications that the request for an independent assessment has in the different systems. Workers' views reflect the roles and tasks that independent experts have in the different countries; and these in turn reflect their distinctive child protection systems and wider child welfare approaches. The paper offers a starting point for reflection about one's own system, and suggests that the well-known distinction between family support and child protection models should not be seen as a simple binary categorisation, but rather as a complex, contingent and contested continuum.

show abstract

“…Lengthy court proceedings about children have, for many years, been a cause for concern in the UK and elsewhere (Dickens, Beckett, & Bailey, ) because of the harm that may be caused to children by lengthy periods of uncertainty (see, for instance, Brown & Ward, ). Indeed, recognition of the harm caused by delay was embedded in law in England and Wales in the Children Act 1989, where Section 1(2) requires the court to “have regard to the general principle that any delay in determining the question is likely to prejudice the welfare of the child.” Nevertheless, care proceedings continued to get longer, despite a number of initiatives intended to address the problem (Family Justice Review, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The present article is the first to bring together findings from both the pilot and the follow‐up. Two previous articles (Beckett & Dickens, ; Dickens et al, ) reflected on the findings of the initial evaluation, the first from a psychological perspective, the second from an international and socio‐legal perspective.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making a target work: Messages from a pilot of the 6‐month time limit on care proceedings in England

Beckett

Dickens

2017

Child & Family Social Work

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Since 2014, it has been a legal requirement in England and Wales for child care proceedings to be concluded, apart from “exceptional cases,” within 26 weeks. When this was first proposed, there were concerns that it might lead to poorer decision‐making or to delay being squeezed to either side of the court proceedings, before or afterwards. This paper reports on the messages from a pilot programme to hit the 26‐week target that took place in London in 2012–2013. The study compared the progress of the cases from the pilot year with those the year before, 180 cases in total, involving 256 children. The local authorities involved were able to achieve considerable improvements in timeliness, not just in the proceedings, but for the pre‐ and post‐court processes too; and the quality and fairness of decisions did not seem to be impaired, in terms of the plans for the children and subsequent outcomes over a period of 2 years. “Targets” do not generally find a warm welcome in the social work literature, but this paper shows that when collaboratively implemented, with a measure of flexibility and adequate resources, they can be an effective way of helping to achieve positive change.

show abstract

Justice, speed and thoroughness in child protection court proceedings: Messages from England

Cited by 8 publications

References 13 publications

Improving decision‐making in care order proceedings: A multijurisdictional study of court decision‐makers' viewpoints

Improving decision‐making in care order proceedings: A multijurisdictional study of court decision‐makers' viewpoints

Social Workers and Independent Experts in Child Protection Decision Making: Messages from an Intercountry Comparative Study

Making a target work: Messages from a pilot of the 6‐month time limit on care proceedings in England

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About