Children Act 1989

Mm-hmm.

Another example is, uh, it comes under Section 46 of the Children's Act.

Okay.

It's called the police power, uh, po- police power protection.

Well, okay, so to give you an example.

Mm.

Section 47 of the Children's Act-

Mm-hmm

Now when we say statutory duties, all that really means is the specific jobs and responsibilities that social workers are required by law to carry out.

Frameworks like the Care Act 2014, the Children Act 1989, the Mental Capacity Act 2005 or the Mental Health Act give social workers significant authority under law.

The authority to investigate, to assess eligibility for public support, to allocate or withhold resources, to recommend court proceedings, to restrict rights or liberties under legal protections, to make life-altering decisions alongside or about people.

That means being a nice person isn't enough.

There is no single child protection law in the UK, so let's run through the legislative timeline the board expects candidates to recognize.

The foundational act is the Children Act 1989.

This introduced the paramountcy principle, meaning the child's welfare is paramount when making any decisions.

It also places a statutory duty on local authorities to investigate if they have reasonable cause to suspect a child is suffering significant harm.

unhappy with this decision the parents appealed and the court of appeal for england and wales had a difficult first of its kind decision to make under intense public scrutiny and again with very little time to do it the time to save jody was indeed running out each of the three judges on the court of appeal issued a separate opinion though all three judges did agree none of the three judges on the appeals panel fully agreed with the others legal reasoning so you could just see how much of a mess this is this issue is rough and implicates both parental family law rights and criminal law specifically murder so two of the issues that had to be decided by the court of appeal in the case of a re-a in the united kingdom was whether these children were indeed capable of being murdered by these doctors and whether the separation surgery was was lawful over the parents' objection.

First, it held under the Children Act of 1989, which placed the welfare of the child as the paramount consideration.

The Court of Appeal was satisfied that the parents' wishes should not prevail and that it was entitled to put the welfare interests of the viable child over the non-viable sister.

The more difficult issue concerned the lawfulness of the surgery, which would have, quote, "...inevitably involved the performance of positive acts which would cause Mary's death." Essentially, the worst dilemma for the court was whether, despite their parents' wishes, it was lawful to allow the surgery when it would amount to the murder of Mary by the doctors.