Parental responsibilities and the Children Act 1948

Abstract

Finding an appropriate balance between the public responsibilities of the state and the private responsibilities of parents to promote and safeguard children's welfare is a perennial issue. Section One of the Children Act I948 marks an important point in this debate; in giving statutory authori-ties a duty to receive children into their care as a voluntary measure, it allowed them to undertake and to regulate interventions that had previously been the province of the voluntary societies; in refusing to authorise the retention of children whose relatives wished to resume care, it explicitly rejected the severance polices introduced half a century before. Although this may have reinforced the growing view that the state should work in partnership rather than in conflict with parents, a balance between conflicting interests is not easy to achieve. After the backlash of the I980s, the current emphasis on promoting the relationship between separated children and their parents needs to take account of the minority for whom contact will not necessarily be beneficial.