International perspectives on child-responsive courts: Is the voice of the child included?

Judicial and administrative courts serve as decision making bodies when children require involuntary separation from their parents due to child maltreatment, when children’s well-being requires outside intervention, or when... [ view full abstract ]

Judicial and administrative courts serve as decision making bodies when children require involuntary separation from their parents due to child maltreatment, when children’s well-being requires outside intervention, or when children may be beyond their parents’ control. Decisions such as these, typically made under grave family circumstances, are highly consequential for all family members.  Children who are at the center of these child protection judgments may or may not be engaged as agents in the decision making process, in spite of the proscriptions of the UNCRC.

Objectives: This paper examines court decision makers’ views on child-responsive courts in England, Finland, Norway, and the U.S.A. (California).  The paper examines between-country similarities and differences in judicial decision-makers’ views of their courts as child-friendly.  It also examines whether there are differences between different judicial actors (e.g., judges, versus lay members or experts) regarding their perspective on courts as being child-friendly.

Methods: The analysis is based on the responses of 1,479 court decision-makers in England (N=54), Finland (N= 65), Norway (N=1323) and the United States (California) (N = 39) about the degree to which judicial actors see dependency courts as child-friendly.  The questions are a part of a wider on-line survey addressing court decisions regarding care orders.

Results: Judicial decision makers from this study suggest that children’s rights to express their views are followed in their courts. To degree to which court timeframes, court environments, and the language used in courts are child-sensitive, vary across countries. 

Conclusions: The creation of “child-friendly” environments in judicial court rooms is complex, and not all judicial actors agree that they should be.  Strategies to develop child-responsive contexts where children’s voices can be heard are considered.