Children Act—more harm than good?

In this issue, two paediatricians experienced in dealing with child abuse argue that the law, as enshrined in the 1990 Children Act is failing those whom it was designed to help. Before the Act became law, seriously abused children could quickly be removed from danger and placed in a permanently safe environment. This is no longer the case, argue Speight and Wynne (page 192) following pressure from parents' rights groups, some social workers, and the Cleveland debacle (an inquiry into an apparent rapid rise in incidence of child sexual abuse in one area of the UK).

Speight and Wynne claim the courts may be slow, unnecessarily wasteful in the use of “experts”, and biased towards keeping children within abusive or neglectful families; social service departments may shrink from the expense of court action; parents' responsibilities are regarded as secondary to their rights. The authors call for the act to be examined critically …