The paper will present findings from the first part of a 30 month study designed to examine the impact of the care proceedings reforms on the legal process and outcomes for children 1 – 5 years after the court decision.
The child welfare system in England is dominated by law and legal process (Dickens 2005) – approximately three-quarter of children in the care system on census day have been committed by the courts; judges and lawyers have a major role in shaping decision-making processes for entry to care, care plans on entry and the use of kin-care through proceedings for abused and neglected children. Despite concerns that court decision-making processes were too lengthy for young children, who were most likely to be subject to them, repeated attempts to reduce their duration failed.
By 2012, the average length of the court process to determine the plan for the child was over 60 weeks. Although this could be seen as ensuring a thorough examination of all the options, it also prolonged instability for children in temporary placements, and resulted in decisions by default if parents ceased to engage with long, stressful proceedings. In 2014, new legislation set a maximum duration for these cases of 26 weeks. Proceedings were re-cast, requiring more pre-application preparation and more focused social worker evidence, and limiting the appointment of (external) experts. There was a substantial implementation programme; timely case completion is closely monitored. The average duration of care cases is now approximately 28 weeks; almost 60% cases exit from the legal process in 26 weeks. The presentation will address in what ways, and to what extent, the reduction in the length of care proceedings has impacted on decision-making and the decisions made for children.
Method
The study uses a two-sample method, comparing proceedings in 2014-15 with an earlier sample collected by the same team from the same local authorities in 2009-10 (Masson et al 2013). Each sample includes approximately 200 care proceedings cases (300 children) filed by 6 local authorities in England and Wales. Data are extracted from applications, written evidence, records of the process and orders, and include information about the child’s family and the children’s service involvement with them. These data allow comparison of the decision-making process and the orders made.
Results
The presentation will focus on the following questions:
1) Have the increased demands on local authorities bringing proceedings resulted in delays in making applications to court?
2) Have shorter proceedings impacted on the court process, for example, resulting in more contested final hearings?
3) Are orders comparable to those granted in 2010?
Conclusions
Concerns were raised before the reform that 26 weeks was too short a time to make life-changing decisions for children and families fairly; that the time-limit would simply shift delay to before (or after) the proceedings (McKeigue and Beckett 2008); and that shorter proceedings would place more demands on professionals, social workers, lawyers and judges. This paper will report preliminary findings on whether those misgivings appear well-founded.
References
Dickens J. (2005) ‘Being “the epitome of reason”: the challenges for lawyers and social workers in child care proceedings.’ International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family 19: 1–29
Masson, J. and Dickens with Bader, K. and Young, J. (2013) Partnership by law? available at http://bit.ly/1Uf6vve
McKeigue, B and Beckett, C. (2008) ‘Squeezing the Toothpaste Tube: Will Tackling Court Delay Result in Pre-Court Delay in its Place?’ BJSW doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcn119
