Ofsted has published Joint area review (JAR) reports for Hammersmith and Fulham, Knowsley, Bracknell Forest, Derby, Gloucestershire, Leicestershire, Liverpool, North Lincolnshire and Wandsworth. The services reviewed include council services, health services, police and probation services, and publicly funded services provided by voluntary bodies. Evidence from other inspections, including schools, further education colleges and residential settings, also contribute to the review. You can look at the reports for the individual authorities
here .
Ofsted also publishes its reviews of LA adoption & fostering services and residential units on their social care page . 
The Fatherhood Institute and Department for Children, Schools and Families have produced guidance for local authorities and children’s trusts to help them develop parenting support services which are effective at strengthening father-child relationships. The guidance, which consists of a 'checklist' of father-inclusive approaches, is aimed mainly at Parenting Commissioners and those involved in drawing up Parenting Strategies, but will be of interest to anyone with a strategic role in children's services. DCSF will review implementation and follow up with Parenting Commissioners 'at some point after the Parenting Strategies have been submitted'.
The London Safeguarding Children Board has published its procedures for safeguarding children abused through domestic violence.
The NSPCC is running a course on Child Sex Abuse & the Law on 8 - 9 April.
You can sign up for a weekly CASPAR email alert from the NSPCC as well as weekly email alerts on New in the NSPCC library .
In case you missed it, registered members of the Law Society can use their new online legal library which has been developed in conjunction with Lexis Nexis.
The Observer previews a government commissioned study (The 'Care Profiling Study' report produced by a team at the University of Bristol, led by Judith Masson. It analyses the characteristics of a sample of nearly 400 cases of care proceedings that went before the family courts between 2004 and 2007) which apparently concludes that social workers are generally more than justified in bringing care proceedings.
Katy Dowell comments in the Lawyer on the proposals to make family court decisions publicly available.
About the Family Law Week blog
Thursday, 6 March 2008
News Roundup
Tuesday, 26 February 2008
Community Care
Community Care is a website well worth checking out by public law specialists. Although aimed at social work professionals it has good coverage of legal topics. In Today's Papers has a round up of all news stories related to social care issues. There are a number of different newsfeeds grouped under headings like child abuse, children's services, fostering & adoption as well as topics of more general community care interest such as housing, with a good explanation of how to subscribe to them (simple if you have Internet Explorer 7 - just click on the orange button at the top right hand of the page and subscribe - the feed is then kept in a directory next to your favourites and the feeds are updated whenever you are online - this means you don't have to go the website every time you want to know what is new and you can glance over the headlines & short summaries and read the full content of anything that interests you - if you don't have IE 7 you need a newsreader such as Google Reader ). There are a number of round up articles on the main website such as this Special Report on the Children Act 2004 & this one on Essential Information on Child Protection one of a series of resource summaries. There is a regular legal update provided by Doughty Street, Hempsons & White & Sherwin, though those published on the website lag slightly behind real time. These are just some of the tip of the iceberg of this website - other features include a series of blogs, an A-Z of benefits and you can sign up for email newsletters. All round a top site!
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
Adoption Resources
There are a huge number of useful websites relevant to adoption in the UK which family lawyers may find useful. The links which follow will all open in a new window.
The Adoption Rules website maintained by the Ministry of Justice follows the CJR model and contains all the rules & practice directions as well as court forms, is fully searchable and kept up-to-date.
For an overview of the Adoption & Children Act 2002 and the main changes it introduced see this article by the Family Team at 4 Brick Court .
The main BAAF (British Association for Adoption & Fostering is packed full of useful materials such as news, research, links and guidance on legislation and has an adoption subsite .
There are various useful sites under the Every Child Matters main page: adoption training materials where you can download workbooks, trainer packs or register for e-learning & the main adoption platform page has links to legislation & practice guidance.
The President's Guidance on Adoption is available online as a pdf file.
The Court Service also publishes introductory booklets on adoption & intercountry adoption and you can download the adoption forms by searching for worktype adoption in the forms section.
The Adoption Information Line is allegedly the most popular adoption internet site in the UK. It certainly deserves to be and has a good database of information and articles about the law, practice and processes of adoption though it is not primarily aimed at lawyers.
The Post Adoption Centre is a long-standing charity providing a range of services related to adoption and another adoption support agency Family Futures provides services to adopted children and their families but also provides assessments in care proceedings, particularly on attachment.
The DCFS Intercountry Adoption site is a comprehensive resource for materials and legislation related to adoptions of foreign children (incoming to the UK).
Other sites include the Independent Review Mechanism is a panel to which would-be adopters can apply for a review of a decision to refuse to approve them as adopters & the Adoption Register is a national resource for linking children to prospective adopters.
Recent cases on adoption on the Family Law Week website include :
Re A : appeal granted to foster carer refused leave to apply to adopt;
Re C : a local authority did not have to make enquiries about extended family members where mother wanted the child, who was the result of a one-night stand, to be adopted.
Re L : a local authority did not have to pursue the natural father or maternal family in circumstances where mother would not give any information about his identity or whereabouts and did not want her family to know about the child.
Three cases on adoption versus special guardianship from 2007 are AJ ((child placed with paternal uncle & aunt who feared that the parents would not co-operate and that future litigation would be a burden – adoption preferred & upheld on appeal), S (applicant was foster carer with very good relationship with mother (who was likely to have ongoing relationship with the child) but who would have preferred adoption – SGO upheld by CA) and M-J (child placed with maternal half-sister – mother with history of drug abuse and recent relapse, not truly accepting need for permanence away from her – adoption preferred to SGO & s 91(14) & upheld on appeal).
In relation to leave applications, the Court of Appeal has granted an appeal to a foster carer who was refused leave to apply for an adoption order, in the case of Re A sub nom TL v Coventry City Council and taken the opportunity to comment on the principles which should be applied in a leave application: welfare is relevant but not paramount as is whether or not the applicant has a real prospect of success. The same principles should be applied in applications for leave to adopt as in applications for leave to apply to revoke a placement order and the decision of the Court of Appeal in Warwickshire CC v M was applied.
Tuesday, 5 February 2008
UK College of Mediators changes name
The UK College of Family Mediators is now the
Tel: 0117 9047223
Friday, 25 January 2008
Shortage, what shortage?
Children & Young People Now has recently published an article about the shortage of representation for children as a result of public funding reforms (you may have to register to read the whole article) following a survey by the Association of Lawyers for Children which suggests 40% of firms are reducing or planning to reduce their public law workload. Not so say the Legal Services Commission and to suggest otherwise is dangerous. CYPN is a website aimed at everyone working with children & young people and they provide a number of useful email updaters and an rss feed.