Sentencing Act 2020

90 Order requiring parents etc to attend meetings

(1) This section applies where a court makes a referral order.

(2) The court—

(a) may make an order requiring—

(i) the appropriate person, or

(ii) if there are two or more appropriate persons, one or more of them,

to attend the meetings of the youth offender panel, and

(b) must do so if the offender is aged under 16 when the referral order is made.

(3) If the offender is—

(a) a looked-after child, and

(b) aged under 16 when the referral order is made,

the person or persons required under subsection (2) to attend those meetings must include at least one representative of the responsible authority.

(4) But an order under subsection (2) must not require a person to attend those meetings—

(a) if the court is satisfied that it would be unreasonable to do so, or

(b) to an extent which the court is satisfied would be unreasonable.

(5) For the purposes of this section, each of the following is an appropriate person in relation to an offender—

(a) if the offender is a looked-after child—

(i) a representative of the responsible authority, and

(ii) each person who is a parent or guardian of the offender with whom the offender is allowed to live;

(b) otherwise, each person who is a parent or guardian of the offender.

(6) In this section—

• “looked-after child” means a child who is (within the meaning of the Children Act 1989 or the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 (anaw 4)) looked after by a local authority, and

• “responsible authority”, in relation to a looked-after child, means the authority by which the child is looked after.

(7) The court must forthwith send a copy of an order under subsection (2)—

(a) to each person required by the order to attend meetings of the panel, and

(b) to any responsible authority whose representative is required by the order to attend meetings of the panel,

unless the person was present, or the authority was represented, in court when the order was made.