Legal decision-making based on the best interest of the child; an attempt to have article 3 UNCRC taken seriously in legal procedures concerning the interests of vulnerable children The Department of Special Needs Education and Child Care in the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences at the University Groningen in the Netherlands began a study in 2004 about children’s rights as stated in the United nation Convention on the Rights of the Child  (UNCRC) in relation to developmental risks and prospects of vulnerable children from different backgrounds. Art. 3 of the UNCRC is one of the key-articles of this Convention. It states that in all actions concerning children, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration. In our study, we performed a literature review of the concept ‘best interest of the child’ in relation to psychological and pedagogical literature about child development and risks. The Best Interest of the Child-Checklist was designed to measure the quality of child-rearing of families with vulnerable children from different backgrounds and is based on the key articles of the UNCRC as well as on the other provisions as stated in the UNCRC.   In this paper I will go into the European legal framework and policy on children’s rights and present the checklist that is to be used in several legal procedures concerning children to protect their special children’s rights. In the checklist we formulated crucial environmental (familiar and social) conditions for children’s development which were derived from existing theories and from the relevant empirical literature in the fields of developmental and educational psychology which we matched with the provisions of the UNCRC. We first applied the checklist in the asylum procedure of children from asylum seeking families in the Netherlands. Research about how to apply the checklist in Dutch juvenile legal procedures as well as in civil procedures concerning children is going on. In the paper I will go in to how the list also will be applicable in procedures concerning children’s educational rights.