ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 develops the analysis by examining previously underexplored dimensions of public responsibility for children’s health and wellbeing. It considers the duty of public authorities to support the primary responsibility of parents, inter-agency working to protect the wellbeing of children, and compulsory intervention into family life prompted by a child’s medical needs. This chapter reveals that many of the cases early in the jurisprudence, considered in chapter three, which established the principles by which the court decides a child’s medical treatment, were applications brought by local authorities in respect of children in their care. The court was being asked to clarify the roles of the local authority, court, and child’s parents, as well as the relevant law, to ensure that the interests of vulnerable children were protected and seen to be. It was thus crucial that decisions were made in the public forum of the court and that the interests, or welfare, of the child were the paramount consideration. This places cases concerning children’s medical treatment within the changing institutional context of professional duties of care and public obligations for the protection and welfare of children
