Children and Families Act: Rights and wellbeing

What's happening?

The act defends children's rights to live in a healthy environment by extending existing smoke-free legislation, introduced in the Health Act 2006, to circumstances where a person under the age of 18 is present in a vehicle.

Who does it affect?

The smoking ban for vehicles carrying children will be enforced by police officers, while local authority trading standards officers will be required to monitor adherence to any new tobacco regulations when, or if, they are produced.

Implications for practice

Enforcing a ban on smoking in vehicles with children present will be difficult. The police use fixed and mobile cameras to detect speeding as well as people using mobile phones while driving.

But smoking will be harder to spot. With the advent of e-cigarettes, police also run the risk of incorrectly stopping drivers.

Unresolved issues

Although extending smoke-free legislation to private vehicles has been welcomed by health campaigners as an important victory for children's rights, rights campaigners say there are areas of the act that are worrying.

Paola Uccellari, director at the Children's Rights Alliance for England (Crae), says her organisation wanted young people's voices given more prominence in the legislation.

One example she cites is that of family justice provisions that require courts to take the view that both parents should continue to be involved in their children's lives if they separate.

She says this could diminish the importance of a child's views on the issue. "We are concerned that the provisions undermine the paramountcy of the child's best interests and voice post-separation," she says.

Crae also has reservations about the removal of the requirement for due consideration to be given to the ethnicity of a child when making an adoption placement.

"Article 20 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child state that ethnicity should be taken into account when deciding what is best for the child. There is a risk this legislation will undermine the extent to which that will happen in practice."