Barnet och rättsprocessen : rättssäkerhet, integritetsskydd och autonomi i samband med beslut om tvångsvård

Sammanfattning: This dissertation deals with the question of the child´s legal status in legal proceedings concerning its own person. Special problems that may arise in investigations concerning the situation of the child and in decisions on measures to be taken in the best interest of the child are also examined. The Care of Young Persons Act (1990:52) constitutes the framework of this study. According to the Act, the County Administrative Court shall, upon application by the social welfare board, decide whether the conditions for statutory care are fulfilled. The law should act as a means of legal protection for exposed children and young persons. The function of the judicial process is to materialize that protection. The thesis examines this function of the law. Three basic demands according to international conventions and Swedish legislation consitute the startingpoint of the work: the child´s right to legal security, the right to personal integrity and the right to successively increasing autonomy. One of the aims of this work is to examine whether the procedural framework for statutory care proceedings according to the Care of Young Persons Act and the practical application of this framework actually satisfy these three demands. Another aim of the study is to describe, at a more theoretical level, the characteristics and special problems in respect of the child´s role in legal proceedings concerning itself. The Swedish legislation is compared with corresponding regulations in Norway and England. An empiricial study based on 390 judgments from the year 1998 in four County Administrative Courts in Sweden concerning statutory care demonstrates how the rules have been applied in practice.