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Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

I should like to clear up a couple of things in my mind from what the noble Baroness has just said. What is safety for a child? From the literature, it seems to me that many of the families involved in those sorts of proceedings might be described as quite dysfunctional. The concern is that a sense of what is safe for a child should not simply apply to being physically safe but should include what is emotionally safe for them. In principle, it is beneficial for a child to have contact with both parents, as we well know, but there might be a concern if the child of two parents who are at loggerheads with each other, in a very bad relationship, is obliged to be shared between the two. There is a danger that that sort of conflict would be detrimental to the child. I have a note here from a book by three clinicians on the impact of discordant family relationships:"““Unresolved discord between parents is one of the major stresses for a child, potentially affecting all aspects of their emotional life, and continuing disharmony is consistently shown to have more adverse effects than parental separation of itself. The child may become embroiled in the parental disputes and ‘triangulated’ between them as demands for loyalty are pressed on them from both sides””." One may have a dispute where one partner says that the other has had intercourse with young women or whatever. I would find it helpful to have a bit more definition of ““safety”” for the child.