ABSTRACT

One of the underlying purposes of the Children Act 1989 was to provide courts with a greater range of flexible powers enabling it to deal more effectively with the specific needs of individual cases. Part II of the Children Act 1989 confers powers on the court to make ‘s 8 orders’. The term ‘s 8 orders’, which primarily arise in the jurisdiction of private law, is the general term which describes three types of orders: a contact order; a prohibited steps order; a residence order; a specific issue order which are defined by s 8(1) in the following way (see Appendix 1 for s 8 order).