‘Adoption children want voices heard in court’
TESTIMONY from children in family law cases has transformed how decisions are made in the last two years, a top judge has said.
Judge Rosemary Horgan, the president of the District Court, said children are now at the centre of all legal proceedings and that listening carefully to them in court has had a dramatic impact on how family law cases are dealt with.
Speaking last week at the Adoption Authority conference in Dublin, Judge Horgan said children have shown a preference for giving evidence in court as opposed to the judge’s chamber.
She said: ‘We also found that children have an awful lot to say and very interesting things to say, and opening our ears to listening was very, very important. It was our experience that children – young people in the child protection context – didn’t actually want to see the judge in a nice room in a chamber and we had gone to a lot of effort to get a nice room with a very comfortable sofa with nice pictures, we all wanted to move into that room but, no, the children said, “No, where’s the courtroom? Why am I not seeing the courtroom, I am part of this, I want to see the courtroom, I want to see you in the courtroom.”’
She added: ‘That’s what they wanted so we listen to what they want.’
The judiciary’s push to have the child put first and their voice heard stemmed from the 2012 Children’s Referendum.
Children who are in long-term foster care can now be adopted, but it is the preference of those involved in the adoptions to have the children share their feelings on the matter if they want.
Figures from the Adoption Authority of Ireland’s annual report 2016 show there were 95 orders granted for adoptions that year, and 65 orders involved step-families.
The voice of the child and the Adoption Act 2017 were the focus of last Thursday’s conference that involved the Children’s Ombudsman, Niall Muldoon, Tusla chairperson Norah Gibbon and Dr Geoffrey Shannon, who chairs the AAI. Dr Shannon, also the Government’s special rapporteur on child protection, drafted new leaflets and rules on hearing for the voice of the child.
The AAI is the first State agency to produce information and videos which assist children going through the process.
He said: ‘Children are not passive spectators in the adoption process and these new changes are necessary to the process.
‘The new legislation represents the most important change since the Adoption Act was first implemented in 1953.’ He added: ‘The new legislation presupposes a stronger emphasis on the independent rights of the child while respecting the rights of parents. It also provides an enhanced and more heavily entrenched right for children to be listened to.’