A Mother's Natural Justice

The purpose of this threshold requirement is to protect families, both adults and children, from inappropriate interference in their lives by public authorities through the making of care and supervision orders."

It seems to me that to deny a parent of a child the right to be heard on an issue which is fundamental to the determination of the need for care is to deny that parent natural justice.

There are aspects of a „possibility‟ that might be confidently stated as trite. First, a possibility is something less than a probability; that is, something that it is likely to happen. Secondly, a possibility is something that may or may not happen. That said, it must be something that is not impossible.

The magistrate recognised cases where the Director-General "doesn‟t know and cannot reasonably be expected to know" what lies in store for the child.

d) if the child or young person is able to be placed with a culturally

appropriate family, and

‘I should observe that a person seeking leave to apply for the rescission or variation of a care order is not required to prove on such an application that, if leave were granted, the person would be entitled to the order sought. The first step is to simply establish that there has been a change in circumstances sufficient to justify the consideration of an application for recession or variation of the care order’.

, by way of an application under s90 of the Act, seeking to have the Final Order rescinded or varied.   The parents' objective in these circumstances is usually to have the child or young person person returned to their care

according to Dr Lennings, if the child was removed from her carers it would be "inevitable that she will suffer severe attachment loss, possibly leading to attachment difficulties later in life."   This would, he thought, "give the child a vulnerability with an increased likelihood of depression/ anxiety should things go wrong in her life."   The Court of Appeal judgment in...