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The time for child-issue arbitration has come…
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…or has it to give serious thought to whether and how arbitration of child welfare issues might be added to the available dispute resolution options of negotiation (both face-to-face and lawyer-led) mediation and the no longer so available last (as it should indeed be) by a long way resort of waiting for a court to decide?
Although parents have extensive autonomy in relation to decision-making for their children the state imposes limits with which few if any would quarrel: treatment of children which is criminal obviously but also when child protection issues arise and particularly when the threshold criteria are met and the state intervenes by way of a care or supervision order or most draconially by sanctioning adoption. So arbitration if at all would only operate in the private law sphere and then again with exceptions such as status-related applications for parental responsibility or permission to marry (who last came across one of those?).
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Read the full article here.
