Child Law Essay
I am going to be answering the question that Wardship jurisdiction enables a court to authorise the sterilisation of a minor when it is held to be in that child’s best interest and the legal and wider implications of this being in place.
According to Section 1 (1) of the Family Law Reform Act 1969 a minor is defined as “a person who has not attained the age of 18”. Children between the ages of 10 and 14 are deemed to be incapable of forming criminal intent. This presumption can, however be rebutted by proving that the child in question knew that his or her behaviour was ‘seriously wrong’ for example it was more than simply naughty. In accordance with the law young people between the ages of 14 and18 are treated like adults and are so assumed to have normal capacity to commit crimes, however they are treated differently in the courts and are likely to receive different sentences as opposed to adults committing a similar crime.
The High Court has powers to make certain orders regarding children where they have been removed, are in serious danger or at risk. The court will make the child a ward, a ward is a “person, especially an infant or incompetent placed by the court in the care of a guardian”. This means that the High Court will have responsibility for that child and no orders can be made or action taken which affects the child, unless permission is obtained from the High Court first. As the Children Act 1989 allows courts including the High Court to make orders relating to children, Wardship proceedings are only used in very rare circumstances.
“At common law a child will be able to consent to medical treatment for and on his own behalf when he achieves a sufficient understanding and intelligence to ena...
... middle of paper ...
... (Last visited 3/03/2014)
http://m.unicef.org.au/downloads/Advocacy/Law-Library/Article-03.aspx (Last visited 3/03/2014)
Table of cases
Gillick v West Norfolk and Wisbech AHA [1986] AC 112
Re B (A Minor) (Wardship Sterilisation) [1988] AC 199-Jeanette’s case
Re C (Adult, refusal of treatment) [1994] 1 FLR 31
Re C (A Minor) (Wardship: Medical Treatment) [1991] 1 FLR 366
Re D (A Minor) (Wardship: Sterilisation) [1976] Fam 185
Re Eve (1986) 31 DLR (4th) 1
Re F (Mental Patient: Sterilisation) [1999] 2 AC 1
Re J (A Minor) (Wardship: Medical Treatment) [1991] 1 FLR 366
Re K, W and H (Minors) (Medical Treatment) [1993] 1 FLR 854-anorexic case
Re M (A Minor) (Wardship: Sterilisation) [1988] 2 FLR 497
Re P (A Minor) (Wardship: Sterilisation) [1989] 1 FLR 182
Re W (Mental Patient: Sterilisation) [1993] 1 FLR
Re W [1992] 4 ALL ER 627
T v T [1988] Fam 52;
...l now be given the power to interfere in cases where parents have failed in their duties towards the child. This is extremely important as it allows the State to intervene in cases where there has been a failure, which was difficult to do in the past. This new role of protecting children's rights is favourable as it will, hopefully, prevent any failure by the State to children in unacceptable circumstances/situation.
There are many times when a care order has to be put in place and it happens because the authorities believe that it is the best thing to do for the child’s overall wellbeing. When the care order is put in place it will mean that the
The grounds for making a supervision or care order can be found in in s.31 of The Children Act 1989. Before a supervision or care order can be made, there are four areas that must be established. The court must show that ‘the child concerned is suffering or likely to suffer, significant harm’. Under s.31(2)(b) it states that, ‘The harm, or likelihood of harm, is attributable to: (i) the care given to the child, or likely to be given to him if the order were not made, not being what it would be reasonable to expect a parent to give him; or (ii) the child’s being beyond parental control’. The last two criteria are that the making of the order would promote the welfare of the child, and it is better for the child than making no order at all. A care order was explained in Hunt’s major study on care proceedings as a “last resort” and should only be used if all other options have been explored .
Give a brief outline of current legislation, guidelines, policies, and procedures within own UK Home Nation affecting safeguarding of children and young people.
When a court is dealing with proceedings relating to a child, section 1 of the Children Act 1989 (CA 1989) governs that the court’s paramount consideration shall lie with the child’s welfare. The term paramount was explained by Lord Macdermott in J v C which means ‘that the child’s welfare is to be treated as the top item in a list of items relevant to the matter of question’. His Lordship went on to explain that when all the relevant facts and circumstances are taken into account and weighed, the outcome chosen by the court is based on the interests of the relevant child. Therefore any other party’s interest is only considered as far as it contributes to promote the child’s best interest.
In today’s society there is a lot of crime going on that involves minors and the first thing that some people do is blame parents for the misbehavior. What if the minor lives in the home with an alcoholic mom, and a drug addict father, and the minor feels as though he/she is in the world alone. The definition of a minor is “an infant or person who is under the age of legal competence”. (http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/minor) The minor starts hanging with the wrong crowd to feel wanted and decides to rob a bank, he goes to jail, and is sentenced to prison. Now there are clearly things that contributed to the way the minor committed this crime but it does not make it okay either. He was not getting any attention at home so he
Autonomy is a concept found in moral, political, and bioethical reasoning. Inside these connections, it is the limit of a sound individual to make an educated, unpressured decision. Patient autonomy can conflict with clinician autonomy and, in such a clash of values, it is not obvious which should prevail. (Lantos, Matlock & Wendler, 2011). In order to gain informed consent, a patient
There were policies put into place by the government that try to help and mediate juveniles and help curb their urge to commit crimes, one being the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (1). This act was put into place to try and help juveniles in a different way, rather than send them to institutions. There are a couple of different
When working with children and young people, a huge responsibility for us is our duty of care towards them as we also take on what’s called ‘loco parentis’. This means that when a child or young person is left in our care, we take on the responsibility to ensure the safety and well-being as their own parents. This also includes the responsibility to see that children’s rights are promoted and their individual needs are met. Under the Children Act 1989, children have the right to be protected from harm, to discuss their concerns, and be listened to. They also have the right to be told what their rights are, and have their wishes considered when decisions are being discusses, when they affect them. Children and young people are vulnerable because
...o decide. They will have to consider Sadia's welfare as paramount but with consideration to the ethical issues mentioned above. It is unlikely that Sadia will develop and become better with the support provided but the judge could decide that they should maintain her life but being required to provide this support may be an endorsement of the status quo. So, in order to maintain the doctors' integrity the decision could allow the doctors to refuse treatment if doctors feel that they cannot conscientiously administer treatment because of the quality of life of the infant. Their views, therefore, deserve respect, but should not necessarily be conclusive. Where the child's future is utterly bleak and the doctors conclude that there is no benefit in continuing treatment, then the treatment can be withheld, even if the consequence of doing so is that the child will die.
Post, S. G. (2004). Children: II rights of children. In Encyclopedia of bioethics (3 ed., Vol. 1, pp. 385-387). New York, NY: Macmillan Reference USA.
In England, conforming to the Civitas’s Crime report Youth Crime in England and Wales (2010) the youngest age that someone can be prosecuted is as young as ten years old. It is also mentioned that trailing, patrolling and applying penalties on young offenders costs almost four billion pounds annually. The numbers of first time offences committed by a young person has decrease over the years; according to the Youth Justice Statistics (2014) youth crime is down by 63% since 2002. In regards to the offences themselves, nearly every offence category has decreased in reoccurrence with exception to drug offences declares Civitas’s Youth Crime in England and Wales (2010). The same report states that theft and handling remains the highest volume category taking up 21% of all youth crime. It is shortly followed by violence against a person, 19.5%, and criminal damage, 11.9%. It can be concluded from both aforementioned reports that crime in the UK is decreasing. Contrariwise to this, youth reoffending rates are soaring concludes Civitas’s Youth Crime in England and Wales (2010).
Goldston, B (2013), ‘Unsafe, unjust and harmful to wider society’: Grounds for raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales’, Youth Justice, vol. 13, no. 2, 111-130.
The idea of “the child” is constantly evolving, and children appear to be maturing more rapidly each year. As a response, laws pertaining to minors have had to keep up with these social changes. In the health care context, the competency of children is constantly scrutinized and challenged. Accordingly, reforms to past laws that deemed minors lacked decisional capacity have resulted in the “mature minor” doctrine. Although this doctrine allows minors a degree of independence in the decision-making process it maintains many grey areas. The age of consent is inconsistent across provinces and territories, and the guidelines used to assess competence are vague and sometimes arbitrary. With such inconsistency in the measuring of adolescent competence, it brings me to question the competence granted freely to adults. To rightfully judge competence there must be a prototype, something that I and others can form a explicit definition around. With what I have collected, since individuals gain decision-making autonomy when they reach the age of consent, than the defining characteristic of comp...
Youth crime is generally thought as being a very recent and modern day phenomenon, however this is widely untrue. Juvenile crime has been recorded ever since the early 17th Century and yet it has only been within the last 100 years that it has become such a significant issue with the general public (Goldson and Muncie, 2006). It is widely known that the present population are much more aware of youth crime and the implications it causes than ever before. There are endless theories as to why crime occurs and about the correct approach to combat it, the main conflict being over whether to treat young people as a threat or as a victim, which is a debate that still continues to this day (Omaji,