Court appointment of children's advocates

The letter Justice For Children, by Ruth Farrugia (May 10) gives the mistaken impression that the low numbers of court cases in which a children's advocate was appointed was, in some way, impaired by the number of children's advocates in post.

It must be stressed that it is the court which decides when and in which cases it should appoint a children's advocate and not the Registrar, the Commissioner for Children or any other authority which might have any interest in such instances. In all those cases when the court felt that it was in the child's interest to appoint a children's advocate, such requests were duly met. What Dr Farrugia termed as "low numbers" should therefore not be perceived as leading to "gaps in access to justice". This seems to be a foregone conclusion which is not based on evidence but on precipitous and preconceived ideas.

Furthermore, the decision to engage two more children's advocates was in fact a pre-emptive one based on the evident trend of the courts appointing children's advocates more frequently.