A seat kept for a child who is not yet in the room.
What the children’s court is for
Section 28 of the Constitution and section 9 of the Children’s Act still point the same way: the child’s best interests are paramount. That sentence has to earn its place on the record. A children’s court may deal with care and contact, protection, contribution, alternative care, and adoption, including inter-country adoption.
Section 45 is the jurisdiction list. Section 46 is the order list. Read them before the social worker sits down.
Adoptions — the order that rewrites a family
Chapter 15 of the Act is not a greeting card. An adoption order places a child in the permanent care of a person and has the effects contemplated in section 242. RACAP — the register of adoptable children and prospective adoptive parents — is not a suggestion. An accredited adoption agency, and a designated adoption social worker, are how that register becomes a file the court can trust. A private arrangement dressed as an adoption is how a child is moved without the Act. Ask who accredited the agency, who counselled the parents, and whether the report in front of you is still the child’s present life.
Consent is the hinge. Section 233 requires counselling and, where the law asks for it, the child’s own voice in the presence of the presiding officer. Section 236 is the list of when consent is not required — a list that must be used like a scalpel, not a broom. When guardianship arrives instead of an adoption, section 29(2) still asks why this is not an adoption. The answer may be good. It must be given.
A working method for the children’s-court Monday
• See the child if the Act and the facts require it. A file is not a face.
• In adoption: identity, consent, RACAP, the accredited agency, the designated social worker, and section 242.
• Separate the adults’ war from the child’s week. School, clinic, sibling, language, disability — put them on the record.
• An order that cannot be explained to a twelve-year-old in plain language is probably not yet an order.
A note from Neelan Karikan. The greatest need in that room is to be understood. Write as if the child might one day read the page, because authority that cannot be recognised is only power.