Restoring Children on Court Orders to their Families: Lessons for Practice

Department of Health, Children in care of local authorities, year ending 31 March 1989, England, 1991.

Thoburn J , Captive clients: social work with families of children home on trial, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.

London Borough of Brent, A child in trust: the report of the panel of inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Jasmine Beckford, 1985.

Children and Young Persons, The Accommodation of Children (Charge & Control) Regulations 1988; S.I. 1988 No. 2183.

Children and Young Persons, The Placement of Children with Parents etc Regulations 1991; S.I. 1991 No. 893.

Home on trial placements included those made with parents, relatives, guardians or friends. However, since only a small proporation (6%) of placements were made with relatives at the outset, the placements will be referred to for the purposes of simplicity as placements with parents. Under the revised regulations relatives are excluded from its provisions.

For more information on these and other findings see, Farmer E Parker R , Trials and tribulations: returning children from local authority care to their families, HMSO, 1991.

See for example Lynch M A Roberts J , The consequences of child abuse, Academic Press, 1982 and Hensey O J Williams J K Rosenbloom L , ‘Intervention in child abuse: experience in Liverpool’ in Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 25, 1983.

Berridge D Cleaver H , Foster home breakdown, Blackwell, 1987.

See for example Parker R A , Decisions in child care, Allen and Unwin, 1966; George V, Foster care: theory & practice, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970; and Berridge and Cleaver, op cit.

See for example Berridge and Cleaver, op cit.

Home on trial placements included placements at home of children on parental rights resolutions. In the case of these children we calculated their periods in care from the start of the last episode of voluntary care during which the parental rights resolution was made. As a result, within six months many of the children would still have been in voluntary care. Even when we exclude these children, there were still 27% of children on care orders in the protected group for whom no clear plan was recorded within six months.

See for example Gottesfeld H , In Loco Parentis: a study of perceived role values in foster home care’, Jewish Welfare Association, New York, 1970; Vernon J and Fruin D, In care: a study of social work decision making, National Children's Bureau, 1986; Millham S, Bullock R, Hosie K and Haak M, Lost in care: the problems of maintaining links between children in care and their families, Gower, 1986.

London Borough of Lambeth, Whose Child? The report of the panel appointed to inquire into the death of Tyra Henry, 1987.

Section I of the Child Care Act 1980 allowed local authorities to provide cash if it would ‘promote the welfare of childen by diminishing the need to receive children into or keep them in care’. In fact children home on trial were in the local authority's care although at home, and so should have been eligible as they fitted the category of diminishing the need to keep children in care.

See for example Millham , op cit and Stein M and Carey K, Leaving care, Blackwell, 1986.