Year: 1988
Type: article
Abstract: WHETHER, and, if so, the extent to which a parent should be allowed to maintain contacts with a child who is living apart from that parent has been one of the most controversial issues in child care practice.'It now threatens to become a legal battleground.A decisive move into the legal arena was taken when the Health and Social Services and Social Security Adjudications (H.A.S.S.A.S.S.A.) Act 1983 permitted parents whose access to their children in care had been refused or terminated by the local authority to appeal the decision to the juvenile court.2In R. v. U.K.3 the European Court of Human Rights added to the legal input by declaring that, even where a parent's "rights" respecting a child had been transferred to the local authority under a care order or parental rights res~lution,~ the parental "right" to access survived.Now, in Re K. D. (A Minor) (Ward: Termination of A c c e ~s ) , ~the House of Lords has had to consider whether its earlier decision in the landmark case of J. v. C.,6 which firmly declared that decisions taken under the wardship jurisdiction were to be based on the paramountcy of the welfare of the child, had obliterated any parental "right" to access and might, therefore, be inconsistent with the interpretation given to the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in R. v. U. K .Indeed, it has even been questioned whether it makes sense to talk about rights at all in this context.'Re K .D. was a difficult, but not unusual, case for the local authority.A 15-year-old girl had given birth to the child; her initial attempts to care for it foundered on the competing attractions of her social life, and the decision was taken that the baby should be placed out with long-term foster parents and, eventually, that the mother's access should be terminated.The baby was warded and the issues determined within that jurisdiction.The trial judge accepted the decision; the Court of Appeal reversed, wanting a longer period spent on trying rehabilitation with the mother.A ' Goldstein, Freud & Solnit, Beyond the Besr Inrerests of rhe Child (1973); M. P. M. Richards, "Children, Parents and Families: Developmental Psychology and the Reordering of Relationships on Divorce" (1987) 1 1nt.Jo.
Source: Modern Law Review
Language: English
Topic: Family and Matrimonial Law
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4206462381