Re C (children)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mc FARLANE,MOYLAN LJJ |
| Judgment Date | 07 March 2019 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
Care – Designated local authority – Supervision order – Disregard of ordinary residence rule in accordance with requirements in a supervision order – Whether supervision order contained any requirements.
Both parents had mental health difficulties. The mother was unable to provide safe and adequate care for the two children and the father had not been in touch with the children for some time. When the case came before the court in Yorkshire, the father offered his home in Dorset as a place for them to live. The plan endorsed by Wakefield District Council and the family court was a child arrangements order providing for the children to live with the father in Dorset, in standard terms, with a one-year supervision order under s 31 of the Children Act 1989. No express requirement was added to the supervision order and the face of the order simply recorded that the supervision order had been made.
Unfortunately, the children did not settle well and the father proved unable to care for them. Both children were accommodated by the local authority in Dorset. By the time the Dorset local authority issued care proceedings, the children had moved back to Yorkshire and were settled with long-term foster parents in the Wakefield area, not far from the bulk of the maternal family. In the care proceedings, the family court expressed the view that, so far as the children’s welfare was concerned, it was best for Wakefield District Council to be the authority with responsibility for these children, given that they came from and were now back living in Yorkshire.
The decision as to which local authority should be the designated authority was to be determined not by reference to the children’s welfare being the paramount consideration, but by the technical provisions of s 105(6) of the Children Act 1989, relating to a child’s ‘ordinary residence’. For the purposes of determining a child’s ordinary residence, s 106(6)(b) required the disregard any period in which the child lived in any place ‘in accordance with the requirements of a supervision order under this Act’. The judge, however, took the view that the fact of the supervision order triggered the disregard provision in s 105(6)(b), stopping the clock in terms of ordinary residence under s 31 at the time the supervision order was made, which was before the children had physically moved to Dorset.
Wakefield District Council appealed. In their position statement Dorset County Council consented to the appeal. The administrative authorities of the two local authorities had agreed that supervision of the care orders would be undertaken locally by Wakefield but would be funded and reimbursed by payments from Dorset.
Held – (1) Under sched 3, para 2(1), supervision orders could contain requirements, including a requirement under para 2(1)(a) for the supervised child ‘to live at a place or places specified in the directions for a period or periods so specified’. Under sched 3, para 3, there was also a facility for the court to impose an obligation on the responsible person (for example, the father in this case), to comply with directions. Therefore, the provisions in paras 2 and 3 of sched 3 to the Children Act 1989 could include a requirement, in an appropriate case, for a child to reside at a particular location (relying on Croydon LBC v A (no 3)[1992] 2 FCR 481) (see [5], below).
(2) The supervision order made in these proceedings could not be said to fall within the disregard definition in s 105(6)(b) because no ‘requirements’ had been made within the supervision order. This had been a bald supervision order with no additional adornments, directions or requirements added to it. The basis of the order had been that the children were to live in Dorset, but the purpose of the supervision order had been to support that placement rather than to require it or to dictate that the...
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