Many of those who work with legal principles affecting children are fully committed to the notion that children have rights. Nevertheless, they may be unclear how to promote such a notion in a way that enhances children's lives at a practical level, rather than allowing it to remain a theoretical ideal. The law does not stand still and the purpose of this book is to consider the extent to which the emerging legal principles can be harnessed to achieve such a goal.

Interest in the concept of children's rights has grown significantly since the first edition of this work was published in 1998. By the time the second edition was published in 2003, there was already an increasing appreciation, amongst lay people and lawyers, of the UK's obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). But the delayed implementation of the Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998 meant that it was then still difficult to gauge the extent to which the principles of law governing children's lives would change under the impact of a rights-based approach. Since then we have seen the courts gradually accommodating the fact that the rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) are also available to children. These two international conventions are undoubtedly having a dramatic impact on adults' perceptions of children's status.