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The day was introduced by the Chairman with an outline of Anna Freud's classic work Beyond the Best Interests of the Child. The book has been influential in bringing about a new recognition and acceptance of the a priori importance of the child's needs as opposed to the parents’ ‘rights’, and the importance for the child of continuity of care by those taking on the parental role in place of the biological parents. The principle that the child's needs are paramount has now been enshrined in the Children Act of 1989.
Dame Margaret Booth opened the proceedings with a paper outlining the scope and function of the Act. She was followed by Mrs Elizabeth Model who explored the difficulties in making arrangements for contact (or ‘access’ as it was previously known), arising from the parents’ own personality problems. In the afternoon Mrs Pauline Cohen and Mrs Audrey Gavshon gave a firm base to the discussion with clinical material presented in the form of case vignettes.
An issue to which the discussion repeatedly returned was the need to weigh the child's expressed wishes against the danger of overburdening him with too much responsibility for decision-making. Dame Margaret addressed this from the legal point of view in outlining the dilemmas inherent in the child's new right to individual legal