A Local Authority v K A B & others; Re GR (Care Order)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lady Justice Black,Lord Justice Richards,Lord Justice Moore-Bick |
| Judgment Date | 29 July 2010 |
| Neutral Citation | [2010] EWCA Civ 871 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Date | 29 July 2010 |
| Docket Number | Case No: B4/2010/1533 and 1488 |
[2010] EWCA Civ 871
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
On Appeal From Mr Recorder Pulman Q.C. sitting at Chelmsford County Court
Before: Lord Justice Moore-Bick
Lord Justice Richards and
Lady Justice Black
Case No: B4/2010/1533 and 1488
Miss Sarah Dines (instructed by the Local Authority Legal Services) for the Appellant
Mr Robin Powell (instructed by Garrods Solicitors) for the First Respondent
Ms Diana Cade (instructed by Budd, Martin Burrett Solicitors) for the Second Respondent
Ms Jane Drew (instructed by Smith Law Partnership) for the Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Respondents
Hearing dates : 15 th July 2010
Lady Justice Black : 1. On 7 June 2010, Mr Recorder Pulman QC, sitting in the Chelmsford County Court, gave judgment in relation to applications by the appellant local authority for interim care orders in respect of four children. The children are all children of Mrs B, whom I will call the mother. The older two are boys, GR and R. They were born on 26 May 1994 and 17 July 1995 and are therefore 16 and nearly 15 years old. The next in age is a girl, C, who was born on 25 July 1997 and is nearly 13. The youngest, G, was born on 14 February 2005 and is 5. The father of the younger two children is Mr B. He is not, in fact, the father of the older two boys, but as these proceedings focus upon his two children, I will refer to him as the father without further qualification.
The Recorder granted interim care orders in relation to the older two boys; there is no appeal in relation to those orders. However, the Recorder refused to grant interim care orders in relation to the younger two children and the local authority seeks to appeal against that refusal.
The local authority correctly sought permission to appeal from the Recorder, at the end of the hearing before him. He refused permission but he did grant interim care orders for seven days in order to allow the local authority time to approach the Court of Appeal. In due course, these temporary interim care orders were extended, on the local authority's application, until 18 June 2010 because the local authority had not yet commenced an appeal. By 18 June 2010, that was still the position, although grounds of appeal had been drafted. That morning, the local authority sought a further extension of the temporary interim orders. The Circuit Judge to whom that application was made extended the orders only until 4 p.m. that day which allowed the local authority sufficient time to contact the Court of Appeal with a view to having the orders extended further pending an appeal.
On the afternoon of Friday, 18 June 2010, I was asked to order such an extension as a matter of urgency. Counsel all attended in person. That rather unusual course was taken because, by the time I was contacted, they were all on their way to the Royal Courts of Justice from the morning's hearing in the county court and it looked as if it would be the speediest way in which to determine whether the children should remain with foster carers for the time being or not. The only note of the Recorder's judgment, at that stage, was the note taken by counsel for the local authority. A transcript of the judgment had been requested but was not yet available and, indeed, never did become available because the tape turned out to be defective. Counsel's note of judgment was not entirely agreed by the other parties that afternoon, nor was her note of the evidence of the guardian which was possibly significant to the proposed appeal. In these circumstances, and in the light of the need to consider the matter rather more fully before deciding on the arrangements for the children's immediate future, I extended the interim orders until I could consider the local authority's application for permission to appeal on the papers with the benefit of an agreed note of the judgment and of the guardian's evidence. The following week, these issues having been attended to, I ordered an oral hearing to determine the local authority's application for permission to appeal, with the appeal to follow if permission was granted, and I ordered that the children were not to be removed from their foster home in the meanwhile.
There has been long standing social work involvement with the mother and her children, dating back to the mid 1990s when the family consisted of the mother, the father, the mother's eldest child, GM, GR and R. The papers before the Recorder included a 46 page chronology, covering the period from May 1996 to February 2010. It details neglect, emotional abuse, and incidents of alleged physical abuse. Repeatedly, social services responded to allegations of various types from various sources, including the children themselves, and each time closed the case in due course. On three occasions the children were taken into foster care for relatively short periods with the parents' agreement; the last of these periods in foster care ended in 2005.
Included in the chronology is an entry for 7 July 1999 recording that the father was given a police caution for assault occasioning actual bodily harm on GM, then aged 9. The formal record of the caution is not available so it is difficult to form a secure view of what happened, but the chronology suggests that the incident in question occurred in June 1999, when a neighbour called the police after seeing the father dragging GM along the pavement by her arms; GM had bruises on her legs and two very small scratch marks on her arm.
The present care proceedings, which were begun at the end of March 2010, are the first proceedings taken by the local authority. The catalyst was an incident on 18 February 2010. Prior to that, the case had most recently been closed by the local authority on Christmas Eve 2009.
A home visit had been made by social services on 10 February 2010 in response to diverse concerns from the children's schools; those visiting concluded that the home environment was unacceptable in hygiene terms. The next entry in the chronology related to 18 February 2010. That day, GR and R ran away from home to the nearby house of a teacher and alleged that the father had assaulted them. They were taken into police protection and placed with their maternal grandparents, where they were seen by a social worker. They said that there had been an argument between the mother and the father. They said the father was intoxicated and that he assaulted the mother. They said that G threw a candle at the father who lost his temper and hit both of the older boys on the arms and the side of the body. They also said that the father grabbed G by the hair and pushed his head into the sofa and that he kicked C.
When the social worker visited the parents to discuss these allegations the same day, the parents said that they were not true, that there had been no altercations and that the children had run off because they were unable to play out that evening with friends. C and G were seen. C was unwilling to engage with the social worker, becoming upset when asked about the incident the night before. Both she and G were taken into police protection and placed in separate foster placements.
Within a matter of days, the older boys were also moved to foster care, the parents not wanting them to remain with the grandparents.
Initially, the parents gave their agreement for all four children to be accommodated by the local authority under section 20 Children Act 1989 but they withdrew this towards the end of March which led the local authority to commence care proceedings because it was considered inappropriate for the children to return home.
The interim care hearing began on 19 April 2010. The children's guardian was only appointed on 16 April 2010 so she had very little time to investigate before it commenced. However, the hearing was extended over 7 days at intervals up until 7 June 2010 when the Recorder gave judgment, and the guardian continued her enquiries over this period. She provided a written report entitled “Initial Analysis and Recommendations” dated 30 April 2010. At this stage she had met the parents and all of the children, as well as other important people in the children's lives, such as teachers and foster parents. GR and R had confirmed their accounts of 18 February 2010 to her and said that they did not want to go home because they were concerned that there would be the same problems.
The guardian saw the older boys again after writing her report. As she told the Recorder in her oral evidence, R maintained his account of what happened on 18 February but GR's account changed. He denied that there had been violence on the day they left home and said that they left when their parents refused to let them go out to see a friend.
Over the seven days of the hearing, the Recorder heard a surprising amount of oral evidence for an interim hearing. As well as hearing from the local authority, the parents and the guardian, the evidence he heard included evidence from a witness for the parents, Mr Helps, who was present on the evening of 18 February and supported the parents' account of events, and from someone from the school attended by R and C, who we are told gave evidence for a whole day.
The Recorder began his judgment by announcing his conclusion that there should not be interim care orders in relation to C and G and briefly summarising the reasons for it, which are recorded in this way in...
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