At 11:43 26/01/04 +0000, Paul Spicker wrote (in part):
>Proof beyond doubt is not however the test for child care law. The
>interests of the child are paramount, and the test is whether the child
>is at risk. A child who is failing to thrive or develop is
>unquestionably at risk, and that is what prompts investigation. The
>idea that children should only be removed from parents on proof of guilt
>implies a return to the rules of the 1940s and 50s, rules which we moved
>away from because they signally failed to protect children.
>Unfortunately, many inquiries have been handed to criminal lawyers, who
>persist in seeing the issue as one of proof beyond doubt - an example is
>the Clyde inquiry on Orkney. The decision to take a child into care is
>supposed to be based on the balance of risk. Unexplained deaths and
>MSBP are some of many circumstances in which children may be considered
>to be at risk.
It obviously is difficult to find an acceptable 'happy medium'
here. No-one can deny that the interests of a child must be paramount -
but those interests obviously relate to many other things in addition to
the risk of being harmed by parents; in particular, there are many aspects
of being removed from parents which are contrary to the interests of the
the child - which interests, as you say, are paramount.
I can see that demanding proof of risk of parental harm 'beyond reasonable
doubt' (whatever probability that is meant to represent!) would probably
leave an unacceptable number of children at risk from their parents (c.f.
the 40s/50s situation you refer to). However, it could also easily be
argued that it is unacceptable to damage (by unnecessarily removing them
from their parents) the ('paramount') interests of as many children as are
'saved' - which would presumably be what would happen if a 'balance of
probabilities' (i.e 50% probability) test is applied.
Goodness knows where the 'happy medium' lies - but my personal opinion
would be that it should probably be considerably above the p=0.5 point, if
the overall ('paramount') interests of children are to be best served.
Kind Regards
John
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