The Acceptability of Child Protection Interventions: A Cross-Country Analysis

Newborn judgements

To study the thresholds for intervention, the rationale and justification for a decision about removal of a newborn baby, we have collected all the first instance court judgements from eight countries for one year, and sometimes several years. Below a brief overview of the data material collection from each country is presented.

England
Newborn removals

For England, the empirical data used in the project consists of all publicly available (n=14) newborn removal cases decided in 2015-2017 (published in BAILII, British and Irish Legal Information Institute, database). This does not include care and placement orders, as placement order cases are in effect adoption cases and the court reasoning follows this line. For 2015, 2016 and 2017, there were 455 publicly available cases decided by the Family Courts (first instance). We manually reviewed these cases, and identified 14 cases concerning care order removals of newborns in England that meet our inclusion criteria. We also consulted non-published judgments, but this data collection did not yield any written judgments fitting our criteria for newborn removal cases.

Finland
Newborn removals

For Finland, the empirical data used in the research consists of all judgements (n=25) of newborn removals decided by the Administrative Courts in 2016. For Finland, we requested and received access to all the court decisions from 2016 and 2017 of care orders made under paragraph 40 of the Child Welfare Act (Huostaanotto ja sijaishuoltoon sijoittaminen), aged 2 years or younger at the time of the decision by the administrative courts. We received 129 such cases; from these we have manually identified 53 cases that fit our selection criteria of newborn removals; 25 from 2016 and 28 from 2017. The full sample from 2016 was then selected as the material for analysis.

Germany
Newborn removals

In Germany, the empirical data used in the research consist of all (n=27) newborn removal cases decided between 2015-2017 in one large city. In Germany, we have access to all judgments from the district court in that city, family division (Amtsgericht), concerning removals of newborns. These were identified by a search for care order judgments based on § 1666 BGB (German Civil Code, Kindeswohlgefährdung) where an interim order was made when the child was up to 100 days old and where the main proceedings (Hauptsacheverfahren) were decided between 2015-17 (including decisions made in 2018 where the child concerned was born in the previous year). This yielded a total of 74 cases. From these, we have manually identified the cases that concern newborn removals (n=27).

Norway
Newborn removals

For Norway, we have access to all judgements (n=76) from the county board concerning removals of newborns, i.e. based on the child welfare act section 4-9, (1), cf. section 4-8 (2) (temporary) followed by section 4-8 (2), cf. section 4-12 (care order) in 2016. To make sure we have the full sample, we also did a manual review of all cases filed under section 4-8 and section 4-12 where the child is 12 months or younger. For 2016, this resulted in a total of 76 judgments.  We have ordered them chronologically after decision date, and selected every second judgment. The randomized sample for analysis is 38 judgments.

Adoption judgements

England
Adoptions from care

For England, the empirical data used in the project consists of all publicly available (n=31) placement order cases decided in 2016 (published in BAILII, British and Irish Legal Information Institute, database), as well as N=29 placement order cases collected from two large court areas. Cases were found first by searching BAILII for decisions made by the England and Wales Family Court in 2016. Out of 121 decisions, 31 were identified as placement orders. The second search was done in the court’s registry. From a list of 147 placement order cases, we retrieved 29 written judgments.

Finland
Adoptions from care

For Finland, the empirical data used in the research consists of all judgements (n=13) of adoptions from care decided in 2015 and 2016. These had been identified from an overall sample of 623 domestic adoptions of minors in those two years for a previous Finnish study by Laine et al. (2018). The district courts who had given access to the judgements for that study were contacted to obtain approval to access the same material for the current research. This was granted and the full sample of 13 cases was used as empirical material in this project.

Germany
Adoptions from care

In Germany, the empirical data used in the research consist of all adoption from care cases decided between 2015-18 in one large German state and in a big city in another state (n=29). We have access to all adoption from care decisions via the youth welfare offices, in which parental consent to the adoption was substituted by the court on the basis of sec. 1748 BGB (German Civil Code). These were identified by a search for decisions made under this provision, and in which the child was adopted in the years 2015-18. This yielded a total of 37 cases, eight of which were manually excluded as step-parent adoptions. This resulted in a total sample of 29 cases that concern adoptions from care.

Norway
Adoptions from care

For Norway, we have access to all judgments (n=58) from the county board concerning child protection adoptions, i.e. based on the child welfare act § 4-20. For 2016, it was a total of 58 judgements. For some analyses we only use a randomized sample of 29 judgements, based on ordering the 58 judgements chronologically after decision date, and selecting every second judgement.

Surveys

To be published.

Interview guides

To be published.

Mlambo, R. (2022). [Book review: Adoption from Care: International Perspectives on Children’s Rights, Family Preservation and State Intervention], by T. Pösö, M. Skivenes & J. Thoburn (eds), The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 52, Issue 7, October 2022, 4466–4467.

Križ, K., Krutzinna, J., Pösö, T. & Skivenes, M. (2022) The Invisible Child: A Comparative Study of Newborn Removal Judgments from a Child Equality Perspective (CEP). The International Journal of Children’s Rights. Online Publication Date 22 August.

Løvlie, A. G. (2022) Evidence in Norwegian child protection interventions – Analysing cases of familial violence. Child & Family Social Work. Early view, July 2022.

Skivenes, M. & Benbenishty, R. (2022) Populations trust in the child protection: A cross-country comparison of nine high-income jurisdictions. Journal of European Social Policy. May 2022.

Helland, H. S., Pedersen, S. H. & Skivenes, M. (2022) Comparing population view’s on state responsibility for children in vulnerable situations – the role of institutional context and socio-demographic characteristics. Journal of Public Child Welfare. Ahead-of-print, 1-22.

Berrick, J., Skivenes, M. & Roscoe, J. (2022) Parental freedom in the context of risk to the child: Citizens’ views of child protection and the state in the US and Norway. Journal of Social Policy: 1-22.

Pösö T., Skivenes, M. & Thoburn J. (2021). Adoption from Care: International Perspectives on Children’s Rights, Family Preservation and State Intervention. Bristol, UK: Policy Press.

Berrick, J.D., Skivenes, M., & Roscoe, J. (2021) Children’s rights and parents’ rights: Popular attitudes about when we privilege one over the other. International Journal of Social Welfare, (2021)00: 1-14.

Thoburn, J. (2021) Processes and determining factors when family court judgments are made in England about infants entering care at birth. Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 43(4): 455-466.

Løvlie, A. & Skivenes, M. (2021). Justifying interventions in Norwegian child protection – an analysis of cases of violence in migrant and non-migrant families.  Nordic Journal on Law and Society, 4(2): 1-41.

Luhamaa, K., McEwan-Strand, A., Ruiken, B., Skivenes, M., & Wingens, F. (2021). Services and support for mothers and newborn babies in vulnerable situations: A study of eight European jurisdictions. Children and Youth Services Review, 120 (2021) 105762: 1-10.

Helland, H. S. (2021) “In the Best Interest of the Child? Justifying Decisions on Adoption from Care in the Norwegian Supreme Court.” The International Journal of Children’s Rights, 29 (2021), 609-639.

Helland (2021) Reasoning between Rules and Discretion: A Comparative Study of the Normative Platform for Best Interest Decision-Making on Adoption in England and Norway.” International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family, 35 (1), 1-28.

Baniamin, H. (2021) Variations in the Acceptance of Parental Corporal Punishment of Children: What Matters? Journal of Interpersonal Violence, July: 1-26.

Breen, C., Krutzinna, J., Luhamaa, K., & Skivenes, M. (2020). Family Life for Children in State Care. The International Journal of Children’s Rights, 28(4): 715-747.

Krutzinna, J. & Skivenes, M. (2020). Judging parental competence: A cross-country analysis of judicial decision makers’ written assessment of mothers’ parenting capacities in newborn removal cases. Child & family social work, 26 (2021): 50-60.

Burns, K., Križ, K., Krutzinna, J., Luhamaa, K., Meysen, T., Pösö, T., Segado, S., Skivenes, M. & Thoburn, J. (2019) The hidden proceedings – An analysis of accountability of child protection adoption proceedings in eight European jurisdictions. European Journal of Comparative Law and Governance, 6 (2019): 339-371.

Helland, H. S., Pedersen, S. H. & Skivenes, M. (2020) Adopsjon eller offentlig omsorg? En studie av befolkningens syn på adopsjon som tiltak i barnevernet [Adoption or public care – Citizens’ views on adoption as a child protection measure]. Tidsskrift for samfunnsforskning, 61 (2): 124–139.

Hestbæk, A., Höjer, I., Pösö, T. & Skivenes, M. (2020) Child welfare removal of infants: Exploring policies and principles for decision-making in Nordic countries. Children and Youth Services Review, 108 (2020) 104572: 1-8.

Langford, M., Skivenes, M., & Søvig, K. H. (eds.) (2019). Child rights in Norway: Measuring Compliance. Universitetsforlaget.

Skivenes, M. & Søvig, K. H. (eds.) (2019). Child Rights and International Discrimination Law: Implementing Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Routledge.