Using the law to uphold vulnerable children’s rights and entitlements
Carol Homden, chief executive, Coram Group
Wednesday, December 22, 2021
It is 40 years since Coram Children’s Legal Centre published Locked Up in Care, its first major report. It has championed the rights of marginalised groups of children and is still holding policymakers to account.
For 40 years, Coram Children’s Legal Centre (CCLC) has championed the rights of children and young people, supporting them to access justice and strengthening the legal framework.
Working with colleagues across the sector, the realisation of children’s rights is our continuing and driving ambition.
The story began in 1979, which, as a follow-up to the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959, was designated by UNESCO as the International Year of the Child in order to raise the profile of the specific challenges faced by children in areas such as education, health and poverty.
The Children’s Legal Centre was the resultant UK project, established in 1981 with the purpose of promoting the rights of the child, and part of the movement that ultimately led to the UK becoming a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) a decade later.
In its early days, the centre provided free legal advice for children and their families and carers, while addressing issues with wider implications for children through its research and policy work.
In 1982, its first major report, Locked Up in Care, analysed the use of secure accommodation in the child care system (see below).
The following year saw the launch of Childright, a monthly journal established to address law and policy affecting children.
In 1984, the At What Can I? guide to age-based legislation affecting children and young people was launched. It remains a popular reference for children and young people to this day.
Since our beginnings, the centre has never shied away from political engagement in the interests of children.
In 1987, ahead of the general election, we published our manifesto for children, arguing that children and young people should have the right to take legal action on their own behalf.
The demand for children to be heard in decisions that matter in their lives was reflected in The Children Act 1989, which established a legal framework for the protection of children and stated that children in public law care proceedings are automatically a party to proceedings.
The UNCRC signed in the same year has become the most ratified of all international conventions, providing a near universal framework of aspiration for children and young people’s rights.
These legal evolutions marked a key moment in society’s understanding of the concept of children’s rights and led to a substantial increase in demand for the centre’s services.
The amalgamation with children’s charity Coram in 2011 made us better able to deal with growing demand domestically, while we have increasingly shared our experience and expertise overseas through Coram International, working alongside the UN, governments and NGOs to enable children around the world to access legal information, advice and representation.
In 2009, our international team’s work with regional NGOs supporting sexually abused, trafficked or exploited girls in Tajikistan saw us awarded the Gandhi Foundation International Peace Award.
Today, CCLC is the longest serving provider of the Legal Aid Agency’s Civil Legal Advice education service, providing representation to families with children with special educational needs and disabilities.
We hold legal aid contracts in immigration and asylum, education, community care, family and public law, advising and representing around 1,000 clients a year, usually on complex cases, including obtaining refugee status leave to remain, citizenship for migrant children and young people, ensuring children in care and care leavers receive local authority support they are entitled to, and that children’s best interests are served through family care proceedings.
Looking to the future
If the past tells us anything it is that the march for children’s rights and access to justice is a long one and is by no means over.
Even if its principles are reflected, the UNCRC is not yet incorporated into UK law and many vulnerable children do not always enjoy the same enforceable rights in reality as their peers.
At a time of funding constraints for legal aid, pressures on courts and local authorities mean that there are children and young people facing protracted periods of uncertainty, and the demands on statutory services continue to outstrip the capacity to respond.
Tragic cases here at home remind us that we are a long way from achieving a society that is safe for all children.
As the need for legal advice and representation for cases involving children has grown, changes to legal aid in 2013 narrowed the scope of eligibility, with an estimated 15,000 child claimants left without free legal advice and representation every year in many areas of civil law.
The sheer number of children and families who come to us for legal support every day is overwhelming.
Whereas in 1996 the Child Law Advice service advised around 500 clients a month, today, with the support of the Department for Education, some 200,000 unique users access our services – online, telephone and via email – every single month.
With the support of funders, the legal practice is growing to extend access into areas of need, but capacity across the sector remains limited.
We therefore pioneer forms of pro bono engagement from law firms and continue to develop open access resources and toolkits and provide training with and for young people.
There will be no drop in demand for these services unless and until there is a reprioritisation of children’s rights at all levels of government planning and decision making from primary legislation through to policy and practice.
Addressing this means both supporting individual cases and working for change to the fundamental causes of injustice.
CCLC’s work is far from done, and we look forward to the next 40 years, working to ensure that every child can access their rights.
FIVE PIECES OF WORK THAT HAVE SHAPED CHILDREN’S RIGHTS
Locked Up in Care
Coram Children’s Legal Centre’s (CCLC) first major report, Locked Up in Care, analysed the use of secure accommodation in the child care system, contending that the restriction of liberty of looked-after children solely on the basis of administrative decisions taken by local authority officers without recourse to judicial review or appeal breached the European Convention on Human Rights.
This was subsequently acknowledged by the government, leading to legislative safeguards being included in the Criminal Justice Act 1982.
Age assessment of migrants
Age disputes are a significant problem facing young migrants and CCLC has consistently highlighted – notably in its 2013 report Happy Birthday? Disputing the age of children in the immigration system – too many children have been unnecessarily age disputed, because of a default “culture of disbelief” among some assessors.
While the 2019 Court of Appeal judgment finding Home Office policy to be unlawful was welcomed, CCLC is concerned by clauses on age assessment in the Nationality and Borders Bill currently proceeding through parliament and has called for a full children’s rights assessment to be carried out on its provisions.
Judgment on young people in police detention
CCLC intervened in a landmark case in 2013, challenging the Home Office’s legal position under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and its Codes of Practice of treating 17-year-olds as adults rather than children, denying them the right to contact their parents when arrested or to have an appropriate adult present when questioned by the police.
The failure to treat 17-year-olds as children was held to be inconsistent with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Championing access
In 2018, CCLC’s report Rights without Remedies: Legal Aid and Access to Justice for Children found that the removal of most family, immigration and education law from legal aid caused thousands of miscarriages of justice, leading to family break-up, miscarriages of justice and often unlawful exclusion of children from education.
Immigration legal aid was reintroduced for children in October 2020, meaning that separated children, who are mostly in care, could access free legal aid representation in their application to remain in the UK or to become British and CCLC was at the forefront of campaigning for this change.
Challenging council duties on housing support
In 2019, following a judicial review challenge brought by CCLC on behalf of a 16-year-old homeless child, a local authority admitted operating a flawed practice of turning homeless children away from care.
The court challenge related to a housing partnership introduced by the council’s social services department through which 16- and 17-year-old children and young adults who are at risk of homelessness can access accommodation while accessing support in a supported living arrangement.
However, CCLC’s case work revealed the council was using the partnership as a gateway to avoid assuming duties of care to these children, diverting them away from significant protections at a crucial time in their transition to adulthood and without informing them of their rights and entitlements under the Children Act 1989.
