Child abuse has a long history. There have been laws passed since mediaeval times to criminalise certain behaviour towards children. As one historian has put it : ‘The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only begun to awake. The further back in history one goes, the lower the level of child care, and the more likely children are to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorised and sexually abused’ (Lloyd de Mause, The History of Childhood (London 1974)).
‘We have learnt during the Inquiry that sexual abuse occurs in children of all ages, including the very young, to boys as well as girls, in all classes of society and frequently within the privacy of the family.’
This was one of the conclusions of the Inquiry into Child Abuse in Cleveland 1987. It is an unfortunate fact of life that children suffer serious harm on a daily basis most often at the hands of those whom we would normally expect to care for them best.
Whether incidents of child abuse are more frequent than they seemed to be earlier this century is a moot point. But Department of Children, School & Families statistics show something of the current nature of the problem (full statistics are here http://www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/). There are approximately 12 million children and young people under the age of 18 in England and Wales. There were 545,000 referrals to social services in the year to March 2007 resulting in 305,000 initial assessments & 93,400 core assessments. At the end of March 2007 about 27,900 children were the subject of a child protection plan which means their names were registered on the Child Protection Register. Just over half of the children placed on the register were boys and just under half were girls. 15% of registrations were made because of physical injury or risk of physical injury and 7% because of the risk of sexual abuse. The bulk of the registrations were for neglect (44%) and emotional abuse (23%).
On 31st March 2007, about 42,300 children were living in foster care with a total of 60,000 children being looked after by local authorities. 7050 care orders were made in 2005, 1,159 supervision orders and 2,261 emergency protections orders. A further 17,800 children were in care under voluntary arrangements.
Many professionals working with children therefore will inevitably encounter children who are suffering abuse in its many forms and there is bound to come a time when it will fall to you to take some sort of action to deal with its consequences.
The Children Act 1989
In terms of professional responsibilities towards children it is easiest to think of child abuse in the way it is defined in the Children Act 1989, the main piece of legislation which governs disputes about children both in terms of disputes between parents and other family members and in terms of disputes between parents and social services about whether their care of children is adequate.
The Act places the main responsibility for protecting children on local authorities but local authorities may request help in carrying out their protective functions from other authorities including any local education authority. Such a request must be complied with so long as it is compatible with its own statutory duties and does not unduly prejudice the discharge of their functions. The local authority must consult a host of professional agencies such as the local education authority, the police and health care providers as well as young people themselves before settling their Children & Young People’s Plan setting out how they intend to provide help for children in need in their area.
The Act gives the local authority a number of different ways in which the local authority can both investigate whether a child is being properly looked after and take steps to remove a child from a harmful environment if the child’s parent or carer will not co-operate.
Investigation
The local authority must investigate a child’s circumstances whenever either a child is made the subject of an emergency protection order or is in police protection or if they have reasonable cause to suspect that a child in their area is suffering or likely to suffer significant harm. At the conclusion of their enquiries they must decide whether to apply to court for further orders to protect the child. They are specifically required to consult the local education authority if appropriate and anyone asked to assist them must do so.
The local authority can also apply to the court for a child assessment order in similar circumstances. This is a useful power where the local authority are not getting co-operation from the parent in having a child medically examined, for example.
Emergency protection
In real emergencies the police have powers to remove and accommodate a child who would otherwise suffer significant harm but they must notify the local authority at the earliest opportunity that they have done so.
The local authority can apply to the court for an emergency protection order if they have reasonable cause to believe that the child will suffer significant harm if not removed or is taken away from local authority accommodation after being placed there voluntarily. These orders are very short term and can only last a maximum of 8 days with a possibility of one 7 day renewal.
Care and supervision orders
The local authority can ultimately apply to the court for a supervision order or a care order. Typically under a supervision order the child will remain living at home with family but subject to the supervision of the local authority for 12 months and other appropriate conditions. Under a care order the child is often removed from the family and placed with foster carers and possibly adopted. However, in certain cases the child stays living with family members but the local authority share parental responsibility and keep a very close eye on the situation. This often happens when there are tensions within the extended family that the person with care cannot manage without local authority assistance.
Education supervision orders
These orders can be made in favour of the local education authority if the court is satisfied that the child concerned is of compulsory school age but is not being properly educated which means not receiving efficient full-time education suitable to his age, ability and aptitude and any special educational needs. Under an education supervision order the local education authority is under a duty to advise, assist, befriend and give directions to the supervised child and his parents in order to secure that he is educated. It is a criminal offence for a parent to consistently fail to comply with the directions.
These orders are surprisingly uncommon and not applied for uniformly throughout the country. It is not clear why this should be. They did not receive much publicity when introduced and knowledge of their existence is patchy. The orders themselves envisage a co-operation from the parents and it may be that that co-operation is already being sought outside the context of court proceedings.
Reference has been made above to the notion of significant harm which is the entry level test for applications to the court. Significant harm is defined in the Act as follows :-
‘Harm’ means ill-treatment or the impairment of health or development;
‘Development’ means physical, intellectual, emotional, social or behavioural development;
‘Health’ means physical or mental health; and
‘Ill-treatment’ includes sexual abuse and forms of ill-treatment which are not physical.
Where the question of whether harm suffered by a child is significant turns on the child’s health or development, his health or development shall be compared with that which could reasonably be expected of a similar child.
Secure accommodation orders
Local authorities also provide secure units which may be used for any child being looked after by an authority and not solely to accommodate young offenders or alleged offenders on remand. They are provided for young people who have a history of absconding from other types of accommodation and are likely to suffer harm of they do abscond or are likely to injure themselves or others if kept in any other form of accommodation.
On 31st March 2007 about 200 children were in secure accommodation but a total of 750 secure accommodations orders were made during 2005.