The Children Act

Published:

The Children Act, starring Dame Emma Thompson, opens in UK cinemas today (24 August), and explores how society treats children and how decisions about their welfare are made in complicated contexts and circumstances.

Kamena Dorling, Group Head of Policy and Public Affairs at Coram comments on the issues raised in the film, and the complexities of cases in the family justice system:

“Coram Children’s Legal Centre promotes and protects the rights of children in the UK and internationally in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

Much of our work centres on two of the core principles of the UNCRC:

The child’s best interests must be a primary consideration in all decisions affecting them (Article 3)

Children have the right to express themselves freely on matterselsewhere: in real-world innovation. Though economists and management thinkers extolled the virtues of innovation repeatedly, firms were just mastering low-level product, service, and technological innovation. Ironically, it was the most powerful kind of innovation that was left ignored, and so simply stopped happening: institutional innovation.

The first half of the 20th century was a golden age, a period of intense institutional innovation. Simon Kuznets laid down the foundations of GDP. At Bretton Woods, world leaders built a global exchange rate regime. The idea of global governance and justice was formalized in international codes of law and tribunals. The groundwork was dug for new kinds of organizations, like 501c‘s, formalized in the 50s.

But the latter half of the 20th century was a relative dark age, a period of institutional disinnovation.