In September 1997 the President's Interdisciplinary Committee
organised a conference to look at issues around
Care Planning. As important as the content of the
conference was the aim of fostering mutual understanding
and the cross-fertilisation of ideas across disciplines.
Papers were given by judges, social services directors,
guardians, Department of Health representatives, researchers,
and child and adolescent mental health specialists. Interdisciplinary
workshop discussions followed each
paper generating group views and papers. All the papers
have just been published as a book (Clarke, 1998).
Dominating themes were the question of what, if any,
influence the judge can exert over the Care Plan, the
possibility of refusing to make a Care Order because of an
unsatisfactory Care Plan, the value of the Care Plan and
the accuracy of its details as a way of furthering and
protecting a child's needs, the uncertainty about the
proportion of cases where the Care Plan is altered or
abandoned for good or bad reasons or major drift occurs,
and ways of improving the quality of Care Plans through
interdisciplinary co-operation. Various ways of dealing
with these issues were suggested.