Boost to child protection co-operation as UK brings Hague Convention into force

The Convention provides an agreed set of legal provisions and co-operation arrangements to cover the handling of cross-border cases where children’s safety or welfare may be an issue.

The Department for Education last month published detailed, non-statutory advice for local authorities on the Convention’s application.

This set out the key steps that local authorities can take to: ask for help or essential information from authorities abroad when dealing, for example, with a child from this country who is in need of support or protection; and respond to similar requests put to them by authorities abroad.

The DfE said key points from the guidance were that:

• The Convention applies to situations where contracting states need to co-operate over child protection and welfare cases when there is an international dimension. “This can include care proceedings, contact cases and foster placements abroad.”
• The advice was distinct from Department guidance that already exists on the other main types of cross-border cases – inter-country adoption and child abduction. “It is not intended as a definitive legal interpretation of the Convention – local authorities should seek their own legal advice on individual cases as required.”
• The Convention’s provisions do not mean major change for local authorities – “in a number of respects they mirror arrangements already in place governing co-operation arrangements between EU member states on these types of children’s cases.”
• The Convention does, however, extend these arrangements in some situations, and will mean that similar co-operation processes will now also apply between this country and countries outside the EU which have implemented the Convention. It will not apply between England and the other jurisdictions of the UK. 

The DfE said the advice was particularly designed for local authority staff working with children and families, frontline social workers, their team managers, service managers and children’s services lawyers. It added that the advice might also be useful for other agencies involved in decisions about children’s welfare, including staff from Cafcass and voluntary sector organisations.

The 11 non-EU countries are: Albania, Armenia, Australia, Croatia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Monaco, Morocco, Switzerland, Ukraine and Uruguay.

The Ministry of Justice said the Convention meant that the public could be assured that countries which had opted in to the treaty would uphold and enforce a court order involving the protection of a child.

The MoJ said: "From today [1 November] a wide range of court decisions involving children moving from and to participating countries outside the European Union will be enforced under the 1996 Hague Convention:

• who can have parental responsibility, to what extent and how it can be used;
• rights of custody including rights relating to the care of the child and in particular the right to decide the child's place of residence;
• rights of access, which are rights about contact with the child, including the right to take the child for a limited period of time to a place other than where the child is habitually resident;
• who is to be the guardian of the child, who is to look after the child or the child's property or represent the child, and what they are allowed to do;
• the placement of a child in a foster family or in institutional care or in wider family care such as kafala or similar;
• the management of the child's property for the purposes of the protection of the child."

The Convention is not retrospective and only applies to 'measures of protection' taken on or after 1 November 2012, the Ministry added.

Justice Minister Lord McNally said: “By bringing into force The Hague Convention the UK takes a major step forward in child protection.

“The Government will ensure children from the UK and from other countries are protected – no matter where they or their parents live. By enforcing child protection orders we are ensuring that children from the UK will receive the best possible care as decided by the court.”

Neasa MacErlean