Rights and the Role of Family Engagement in Child Welfare: An International Treaties Perspective on Families’ Rights, Parent’s Rights and Children’s Rights
SYNOPSIS
This paper discusses what rights do family members, parents and children have in family engagement in child welfare decision making. It discusses a topology of rights and applies it to eight countries, who are ratifiers and non-ratifiers of international treaties. It reveals what rights are articulated in international treaties and what gaps exists in family engagement process.
Family engagement refers to role played by family members with help of government representatives for child welfare. Family Group Conferences (FGC) is an example of family engagement in which a wider family group makes plans for children in question. Discussion with the child, private family time and agreeing on a child protection plan is the three- stage objective of FGC. Empowerment and restorative justice are key aspects of family engagement.
International treaties are effective in providing a perspective of how the rights of families, parents and children are important to family engagement in child welfare decision making. International human right treaties enjoy high levels of acceptance and impact on laws, even for nonratifying governments. They can shape and mould policies and laws on family engagement for child welfare. These rights have the power to influence people to think about family engagement and prevent some from trying to disrupt family engagement practices. These treaties can highlight the expectations of participants from child welfare decision-making.
Some of the international treaties that are relevant to family engagement policies and practices are the International Bill of Human Rights which consists of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the International Covenant of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1966), The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, 1966) and its two opposing protocols. ICESCR commits ratifying the national government to enforce rights to education, health and family life. Apart from these treaties, national governments have formed treaties with governments from their region, such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC). Some of the countries in these regions have ratified these treaties while some have not.
The typology of Rights for family engagement offers insights to practitioners as they overcome the difficulties to achieve goals of family engagement in child decision making. It consists of seven criteria’s: Right to Information, participation, express views, privacy, periodic review, representation and right to family support. This typology is applies to countries whose national government has been ratified and also to those who are not ratified. Scores for each criterion is ranging from 0 to 3. Considering these factors, New Zealand tops with a score of 17; Iceland comes second with score of 16 while Afghanistan was is lowest with a score of 6.
Thus, International treaties have articulated many rights necessary for family engagement in child decision making, but some rights are missing. Weak links in these rights deserve attention and improvement. It is also possible for scholars to come up with other rights that need to be incorporated in the international treaties.
Work Cited
Dijibouti. (2007). Periodic report to UN committee on the rights of the child.
Connolly,M., & Ward T.(2008) . Navigating human rights across life course. Child and Family Social Work, 13(3), 348-356
