A London Borough v A Mother
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Carr LJ,Lord Justice Baker,Sir Stephen Richards |
| Judgment Date | 23 June 2020 |
| Neutral Citation | [2020] EWCA Civ 787 |
| Date | 23 June 2020 |
| Docket Number | Case No: B4/2020/0448 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
[2020] EWCA Civ 787
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE WEST LONDON FAMILY COURT
Recorder Thain
ZW18C00427 and ZW47/19
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Lord Justice Baker
Lady Justice Carr DBE
and
Sir Stephen Richards
Case No: B4/2020/0448
In the Matter of the Adoption and Children Act 2002
And in the Matter of LC (Placement Order)
Deirdre Fottrell QC and Richard O'Sullivan (instructed by Local Authority Solicitor) for the Appellant
James Holmes (instructed by Duncan Lewis Solicitors) for the Second Respondent
Gemma Taylor QC and Philip McCormack (instructed by Harris Temperley LLP) for the Third Respondent
The First Respondent was present but not represented.
Hearing date: 4 June 2020
Approved Judgment
This is an appeal by a local authority against the decision of Recorder Thain dated 7 February 2020 to refuse the authority's application for a placement order in respect of a child, hereafter referred to as LC, who was born in May 2018 and is therefore now aged two.
LC is the youngest of three children in her family. She has two older brothers, X, now aged eight, and Y, aged seven. Their father is a 56-year-old man of Indian heritage who was married on three previous occasions before his relationship with the children's mother. Thirty years ago, he was convicted of incest as a result of a sexual relationship with his younger sister which started when she was seven years old and he was aged fourteen and continued for some ten years. The father has five older children by his earlier marriages. In all of those marriages, there were allegations of domestic abuse, and allegations of harassment following the breakdown of the relationships.
The children's mother is a 24-year-old woman of Hungarian Roma heritage with learning difficulties and a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. She had a very troubled upbringing, having been sexually abused as a child and left unsupported by her own mother with whom she has a difficult relationship.
The parents' relationship started in 2011 at a point when the mother was sixteen years old. She and her extended family moved into a house owned by the father. The mother quickly became pregnant and gave birth to X in early 2012. Her second son, Y, was born the following year. Local authority social services and the police were involved on several occasions in the next few years because of concerns about the father's previous conviction and allegations that he was physically abusive towards the mother. In May 2015, the mother was admitted to hospital because of concerns about her mental health. Her condition improved with medication but deteriorated again in 2017 when she stopped the treatment with the intention of having another baby.
Following LC's birth in May 2018, she and her mother were placed together in a hospital ward where they received 24-hour support from mental health staff. The mother's condition worsened and she was reported as hearing voices and displaying violent behaviour towards the father. A social work visit to the family home revealed that the property was in a very poor condition with the whole family sleeping together in the living room because the bedrooms were unusable. The children were placed under child protection plans following a case conference. There were further reports of domestic abuse between the parents and no evidence of significant improvement in the condition of the home.
In July 2018, the parents agreed to the three children being accommodated by the local authority under s.20 of the Children Act 1989. The following month, the authority started care proceedings in respect of the children. Upon removal from home, the children were placed together in a foster placement in Kent. It is agreed that they thrived in that placement, but in October 2018 the local authority decided to move the children to another foster placement within its own area. In her judgment, the recorder noted that it was generally accepted that the second placement, although a closer cultural match, was less nurturing and supportive for the children. In July 2019, the foster placement came to an end and the children were moved, on this occasion to separate placements, with the boys placed in one foster home and LC in another. The sibling relationship was maintained through family contact three times a week.
The final hearing of the care proceedings was listed before the recorder for five days, beginning 30 September 2019. The local authority sought final care orders in respect of all children, on the basis of care plans which provided for the boys to be placed together in long-term foster care and LC placed for adoption. An application for a placement order for LC was issued and listed for determination at the hearing. The parents opposed the applications and asked the court to return the children to their care. The children's guardian supported the application for care orders but opposed the application for a placement order in respect of LC. Her preference was for all three children to be placed together, preferably in the foster home in Kent where they had thrived after being removed from the family home, or alternatively with another experienced foster carer.
In her first judgment, delivered after the conclusion of the hearing on 4 October 2019, the recorder concluded that the threshold criteria under s.31 of the Children Act were satisfied and that there was no realistic prospect of the children being returned to the care of the parents, but that it was not possible to reach a final decision about the placement of the children at that stage. She therefore adjourned the hearing, initially for one month, for the local authority to file further evidence.
It is unnecessary for the purposes of this appeal to consider the threshold findings in any detail. Suffice it to say that the recorder made a series of findings that the children had suffered neglect, had been exposed to domestic abuse between the parents and had been subjected to excessive physical chastisement. She also found that the parents had failed to prioritise the children's needs or to establish and maintain routines and boundaries, that they had shown no insight into the effect of their parenting on the children's emotional development, and that the mother's mental health problems made it likely that she would become emotionally and physically unavailable to the children in future. The recorder concluded that the children's psychological functioning had been significantly affected by the trauma and deprivation they had endured.
In conducting the welfare analysis, the recorder had the benefit of expert evidence about the parents from a clinical psychologist, a forensic psychiatrist, and a PAMS parental assessor. On the basis of that evidence, coupled with the evidence given by the social workers and the parents themselves, the recorder concluded that a rehabilitation of the children with the parents, either together or separated, was not a realistic option for their future care. That decision does not form part of the appeal before us and it is unnecessary to consider the reasons for the decision any further.
The recorder also had evidence from a clinical psychologist who had conducted an evaluation of the children. She approached his report with some caution because of criticisms levelled at the report by a number of professionals. In particular, none of the parties accepted his recommendation that the boys should be separated. The children's allocated social worker gave evidence of a close bond between the brothers which led the recorder to conclude that separation would be wholly contrary to their best interests. The recorder took into account, however, the psychologist's observation that LC's behaviour indicated a lack of secure attachment as a result of the deficiencies in her mother's care in the first weeks of her life, coupled with the subsequent moves between foster carers.
The principal difficulty facing the recorder at the hearing in September/October 2019 arose from the disagreement between the local authority and the guardian about LC's future care. When he gave his evidence, the allocated social worker was at a disadvantage because the guardian's proposal to return all three children to the foster carers in Kent had only been put forward at a relatively late stage and no enquiries had been made to establish whether they would be willing to take the children. Having noted the disadvantage which the social worker was under, however, the recorder was critical of his approach in these terms (paragraph 79 of her first judgment):
“However, without having had the chance to consider this proposal fully, I was struck by the social worker's insistence that such a plan would be wrong for LC because, at her age, she required permanence that could only be achieved through adoption. I found that answer lacking in any real analysis of the individual needs of this young child, and the answers appeared to be more in line with a policy decision based on age as opposed to an approach where there was a proper welfare analysis.”
The recorder was also critical of the evidence from the local authority's permanence team which she described as being out of date and providing little by way of analysis in matching the individual needs of the children to reliable information about placement or timescales.
On the other hand, the recorder was strongly influenced by...
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