We publish here our fourth and final volume of case reports for 2014. These include both lengthy and complex cases and accounts of single days in District Courts hearing child care applications, when over a dozen cases, including reviews of existing orders, are often heard in one afternoon. They bring to 101 the number of such reports published in 2014.

The cases again show a wide variation in the reasons why the Child and Family Agency seeks orders protecting children, either by taking them into State care or with Supervision Orders. These range from drug or alcohol addiction on the part of parents, leading to neglect, to serious behavioural or health problems on the part of the children.