By David Foster

he child protection system in England is grounded in the Children Act 1989, as amended. Statutory guidance published by the Government, Working Together to Safeguard Children, provides detailed information on the core legal requirements.

The Children Act 1989 establishes several key principles, including

• The concept of parental responsibility.

• That a child’s welfare is the main consideration when the court is considering a question about a child’s upbringing.

• That children are best looked after by their family unless intervention in family life is essential.

The Act places a general duty on local authorities to promote and safeguard the welfare of children in need in their area by providing a range of services appropriate to those children’s needs (section 17). It additionally sets out what a local authority must do when it has reasonable cause to suspect that a child in its area is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm (section 47).

Section 31 of the Act sets out the circumstances under which a court may make an order placing a child in local authority care (a care order). The Act also sets out the functions of local authorities in relation to looked after children, including a duty under section 22(3) to safeguard and promote their welfare.

Research Briefing. London: UK. Parliament, House of Commons, Library, 2023. 23p.

By Jahnine Davis

HM Inspectorate of Probation is committed to reviewing, developing and promoting the evidence base for high-quality probation and youth offending services. Academic Insights are aimed at all those with an interest in the evidence base. We commission leading academics to present their views on specific topics, assisting with informed debate and aiding understanding of what helps and what hinders probation and youth offending services. This report was kindly produced by Jahnine Davis, highlighting adultification bias, its links to racialised discrimination, and how it can impact upon child protection and safeguarding practices. Crucially, application of adultification bias results in children’s rights being diminished or ignored, with notions of innocence and vulnerability displaced by notions of responsibility and culpability. The Professional Inter-Adultification Model is introduced which emphasises the importance of professional and organisational curiosity, critical thinking, and reflection. The model includes the further concept of intersectionality to encourage professionals to explore how the intersections of race/ethnicity, sexuality, class, gender, dis/abilities, and wider lived experiences may have impacted upon the lives of individual children. At an organisational level, it is imperative that leaders model equity, diversity and inclusion, and embrace both critical challenge and accountability. To assist leaders, the inspectorate has included examples of effective leadership in its 2021 effective practice guide for working with Black and mixed heritage boys in the youth justice system.

Manchester, UK: HM Inspectorate of Probation , 2022. 14p.

By Manfred Nowak

Children deprived of liberty remain an invisible and forgotten group in society despite increasing evidence of these children being victims of further human rights violations. Countless children are placed in inhuman conditions and in adult facilities – in clear violation of their human rights - where they are at high risk of violence, rape and sexual assault, including acts of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Children are being detained at a younger and younger age and held for longer periods of time. The personal cost to these children is immeasurable in terms of the destructive impact on their physical and mental development, and on their ability to lead healthy and constructive lives in society.

The Global Study covers:

An assessment of the magnitude of the phenomenon of children being deprived of liberty, including the number of children deprived of liberty (disaggregated by age, gender and nationality), as well as the reasons, type and length of deprivation of liberty and places of detention;

The views and experiences of children;

Ways to change stigmatizing attitudes and behaviour towards children at risk of being, or who are, deprived of liberty;

Recommendations for law, policy and practice to safeguard the human rights of the children concerned, and significantly reduce the number of children deprived of liberty through effective non-custodial alternatives, guided by the international human rights framework.

United Nations, 2019. 789p.

By Tim Bateman, Anne-Marie Day and John Pitts

Although there are some important limitations with the data, the available evidence demonstrates conclusively that children who are in the care of the local authority are consistently over-represented among those who come to the attention of the youth justice system. A similar disproportionality is also evident within the children’s custodial estate. While it appears that the relationship is long-standing, it has only recently become the focus of policy attention which has begun to explore some of the reasons for the patterns discernible in the figures (see, for example, Schofield et al, 2012: Laming, 2016). In particular, an independent review of the relationship between the care system and the criminal justice system, led by Lord Laming, commissioned an extensive exploration of the available literature that provides a useful baseline for future research (Staines, 2016). The current review aims to provide a context for research, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, that aims to identity the particular pathways of looked after children into, through and leaving custody and to establish in what ways, and to what extent, these might differ from those of children who do not have care experience. It does not accordingly aim to replicate the earlier work identified in the previous paragraph; instead the intention is to draw on previous reviews, and relevant additional material, through a lens that focuses on the existing evidence base as it relates specifically to the likelihood of children being incarcerated, to their subsequent custodial experience and to the provision of effective resettlement once they have been released.

Luton: University of Bedfordshire, 2018. 37p.