A Child's Right to Time: The Missing Dimension of the Best Interests Standard

The best interests standard asks what outcome is best for a child. It almost never asks when.

For an adult, a year is one stage of planning. For a baby, it is the year of the first step and the first word. For a three-year-old, it is a third of everything they have lived so far.

I am a transitional foster carer, and I work with children and teenagers as a coach. Since a toddler came to live in my home, I hear the sentence "the court will decide in a few months" very differently. This essay argues that time belongs inside the best interests standard, and uses Czechia as a case study of what happens when it does not.

Time is not neutral for a child

Delay is usually treated as an administrative inconvenience. For a child it changes the facts of the case.

• Attachments form and shift. A young child's speech, relationships and sense of safety change within months, not years.
• Uncertainty becomes the environment. For an older child, another six months can mean six more months of loyalty conflict, or of living somewhere whose suitability is already in serious doubt.
• The status quo becomes the argument. After a long process, someone often says: "But the child has already got used to the current situation." Perhaps they have, precisely because the decision took so long.
• Evidence moves faster than orders. A new expert opinion may point to a risk for the child while an older order still governs their daily life.

The standard already says so

Article 3(1) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child makes the child's best interests "a primary consideration" in all actions concerning children. The Committee on the Rights of the Child's General Comment No. 14 describes best interests as having a procedural dimension too. As the Canadian Bar Association's child rights toolkit summarises it, that procedural rule includes legal representation (para. 96), reasons for decisions (para. 97) and timely decisions (para. 93), because delays and prolonged decision-making have particularly adverse effects on children as they develop.

Some jurisdictions have written the idea into their own rules. The Illinois child welfare code, for example, has a section titled "The Child's Sense of Time." It recognises that what looks like a brief disruption to adults can be an intolerably long period for a child, and requires the agency to act promptly.

These are statements of principle. Very few systems attach a clock to them.

Fast is not hasty

I am not arguing for deciding without evidence or without respect for parents' procedural rights. A fast, wrong decision can harm a child as much as a slow one.

The point is different. Speed should come from rules, not from good intentions: deadlines, reasons when deadlines slip, and someone whose job is to notice. Time should be treated as one of the factors by which we judge whether a system is serving a child's best interests, and not only as a by-product of workload.

The question for every institution becomes: what does one more month of waiting mean for this particular child?

A case study: Czechia

Czechia has changed its child and family law substantially in two years, which makes it a useful test.

• 2025: an amendment to the child protection act shortened assessment of prospective foster carers and adopters, aimed to let parents of removed children put their circumstances right, and set a path to end institutional placement of the youngest children (the age limit rises from 2028). A children's ombudsman started work in July 2025 and received over 1,500 submissions in its first year.
• 2026: a divorce reform made agreed divorces quicker and introduced an "interim decision" on a child's arrangements, which a court must issue without delay and no later than three months, valid for at most three months. A proposal under discussion would shorten the three months to 30 days.

That is a real step towards recognising a child's time. But the interim decision is the only stage with a fixed deadline. The final proceedings have none. The law says courts must decide "with the greatest possible speed," but no yardstick defines it. A first hearing can be set months away, and the court does not have to explain why. (Czech child-protection authorities, known as OSPOD, are the municipal social-work offices that monitor children at risk and take part in these proceedings.)

The stakes are not abstract. In 2025 Czech authorities recorded 11,441 cases of children who were abused, neglected or sexually abused, 1,286 more than the year before.

A faster divorce is not automatically faster protection for a child. Where parents agree, the new rules work. Where they do not, the child waits longest.

What a time standard could look like

These are my proposals for child cases generally, not only Czech ones:

• Deadlines by age. For the youngest children, a first hearing within two weeks of the petition and a final decision within six months. For older children, a first hearing within one month and a final decision within eight months.
• Written reasons for delay. If a court cannot meet a deadline, it says why and by when it will act.
• Public statistics on how long child cases take, by court.
• Working oversight of delays. A complaint procedure only helps if complaints are themselves handled quickly.
• Services that exist. A court should not order family therapy at a centre that then says it does not provide it.
• A representative who watches the clock. Someone whose only client is the child, who tracks deadlines across court, social services and care placements.

Questions any system can ask itself

• Does the law set any deadline for decisions in child cases, or only for the first stage?
• If a deadline is missed, does anyone have to explain why?
• Are the lengths of child proceedings published?
• Who is accountable for a child's time across courts, social services, health and schools?

If we asked these questions of every system, we would learn quickly where children are being asked to wait.

A child's time is not an adult's time.