RE O (A Child)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE THORPE,Mr Justice Wall,MR JUSTICE WALL |
| Judgment Date | 04 July 2002 |
| Neutral Citation | [2002] EWCA Civ 1054 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Docket Number | B1/2001/1329 |
| Date | 04 July 2002 |
[2002] EWCA Civ 1054
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE MANCHESTER COUNTY COURT
(His Honour Judge Bloom QC)
The Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC2
Lord Justice Thorpe
Mr Justice Wall
B1/2001/1329
MR A MCFARLANE (instructed by Messrs Green & Co, Manchester M3 2WJ) appeared on behalf of the Applicants
The Respondents did not appear and were not represented
Mr Justice Wall will give the judgment.
This is one of those poignant Family Division cases which occur from time to time when short-term local authority foster parents are given a small child to care for until such time as the child's future is decided in public law proceedings. Often those proceedings take longer than anticipated, and by the time they come to be decided the foster parents have formed a profound bond with the child and find themselves unable to give him or her up. Thus when the care proceedings reach their conclusion and the child is freed for adoption, the local authority put forward prospective adopters who have been approved through the conventional channels and require the child to be handed over. The foster parents in question, as I say, feel unable to give up the child and themselves apply to adopt.
In this case the little girl is A S O, who was born on 24th January 2001. The foster parents are Mr and Mrs S. They have two boys of their own, now aged 13 and ten. They were given the care of A at the age of five weeks, when she was taken into local authority care away from her abusive parents.
The care proceedings which were then instituted were throughout dealt with by His Honour Judge Bloom QC, an extremely experienced as well as—if he will allow me to say so—a very humane family judge.
The outcome of the care proceedings was, in reality, inevitable. There was no way in which these parents were going to be able to look after their child. But, as I already indicated, the proceedings took some time. It was not until 7th March 2002 that Judge Bloom, sitting in the Manchester County Court, was able to make a care order. He also made an order under section 34(4) of the Children Act 1989 and he freed A for adoption.
On 18th March 2002 the adoption panel approved the match of A with Mr and Mrs D, her prospective adopters. That, of course, immediately meant that the local authority was in a position to place A with them. Because of the time that had elapsed, Mr and Mrs S were able to give notice that they intended to apply for an adoption order and they issued their application on 25th March. That immediately meant that the process of handing A over to her prospective adopters had to be put on hold and an application was made to His Honour Judge Bloom on 21st May 2002 by the local authority for the hearing of their application for an order, under section 30 of the Adoption Act 1976 that it was their intention not to allow A to live with Mr and Mrs S any longer. The judge listed the application for 14th June. He directed a report by the guardian. There was already an independent social worker report by Janet Ollier commissioned by Mr and Mrs S.
The judge heard the case on 14th June. It took all day. Indeed, it lasted until, we were told on the last occasion, 6.00 o'clock in the evening. The judge, in an extempore judgment of which we have only a note not a transcript, directed that the child, in effect, should be handed over to the local authority. He refused permission to appeal on 20th June.
This, therefore, is an application by Mr and Mrs S for permission to appeal against that decision. We heard it last week. It was, if I may say so, extremely ably argued by Mr McFarlane QC on behalf of Mr and Mrs S. But we came to the conclusion last week that permission to appeal should be refused. Time did not permit us to give our reasons on that occasion and so we do so today.
As I indicated earlier, the version of Judge Bloom's judgment we have is not a transcript. It is a note. I bear that very fully in mind when considering the reasons given by the judge. We were provided with a most helpful skeleton argument by Mr McFarlane and he was, on the material available and on the documentation, able to make a number of sound points.
The leading case on the subject is a case called Re C (A Minor) (Adoption) [1994] 1 WLR 1220. It was referred to by the judge extensively in the course of his judgment. But it does appear—and this is a fair point for Mr McFarlane I think to make—that the judge may well have put the test against Mr and Mrs S too high in Re C terms. It may also be that the judge paid, notionally at least, too great an attention to the human rights of the parents, and in particular to what they might or might not need to be told in relation to the adoption process. Given that there had been a freeing order, they were former parents and would not know when the adoption order itself had been made.
Mr McFarlane also...
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