Toleration of Diverse Parenting Standards
Hedley J considered the meaning of ‘significant harm’: ‘What about the court’s approach . . to the issue of significant harm? In order to understand this concept and the range of harm that it’s intended to encompass, it is right to begin with issues of policy. Basically it is the tradition of the UK, recognised in law, that children are best brought up within natural families. Lord Templeman, in Re KD (A Minor: Ward) (Termination of Access) [1988] 1 AC 806, [1988] 2 FLR 139, at 812 and 141 respectively, said this: ‘ The best person to bring up a child is the natural parent. It matters not whether the parent is wise or foolish, rich or poor, educated or illiterate, provided the child’s moral and physical health are not in danger. Public authorities cannot improve on nature.’
There are those who may regard that last sentence as controversial but undoubtedly it represents the present state of the law in determining the starting point. It follows inexorably from that, that society must be willing to tolerate very diverse standards of parenting, including the eccentric, the barely adequate and the inconsistent. It follows too that children will inevitably have both very different experiences of parenting and very unequal consequences flowing from it. It means that some children will experience disadvantage and harm, while others flourish in atmospheres of loving security and emotional stability. These are the consequences of our fallible humanity and it is not the provenance of the state to spare children all the consequences of defective parenting. In any event, it simply could not be done.
That is not, however, to say that the state has no role, as the 1989 Act fully demonstrates. Nevertheless, the 1989 Act, wide ranging though the court’s and social services’ powers may be, is to be operated in the context of the policy I have sought to describe. Its essence, in Part III of the 1989 Act, is the concept of working in partnership with families who have children in need. Only exceptionally should the state intervene with compulsive powers and then only when a court is satisfied that the significant harm criteria in s 31(2) is made out. Such an approach is clearly consistent with Art 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms 1950. Article 8(1) declares a right of privacy of family life but it is not an unqualified right. Article 8(2) specifies circumstances in which the state may lawfully infringe that right. In my judgment, Art 8(2) and s 31(2) contemplate the exceptional rather than the commonplace. It would be unwise to a degree to attempt an all embracing definition of significant harm. One never ceases to be surprised at the extent of complication and difficulty that human beings manage to introduce into family life. Significant harm is fact specific and must retain the breadth of meaning that human fallibility may require of it. Moreover, the court recognises, as Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead pointed out in Re H and others that the threshold may be comparatively low. However, it is clear that it must be something unusual; at least something more than the commonplace human failure or inadequacy.’
Hedley J
[2007] 1 FLR 2050
Children Act 199 31
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – In Re KD (A Minor) (Ward: Termination of Access) HL 1988
The local authority sought to terminate parental contact with a child taken into care under a wardship.
Held: The court had to consider the human rights of the parent as against the welfare interest of the child. Lord Oliver of Aylmerton said: . .
Cited by:
Cited – Re MA and Others (Children) CA 31-Jul-2009
Children appealed against dismissal of their care proceedings on the basis that the threshold had not been reached. The parents resisted.
Held: It could not be said that the decision so plainly wrong that the judge’s conclusion on the facts . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Children
Leading Case
Updated: 31 October 2021; Ref: scu.371673