Re A (A Child) (Care Order)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lady Justice Black,Lord Justice Tomlinson,Lord Justice Lindblom |
| Judgment Date | 24 August 2016 |
| Neutral Citation | [2016] EWCA Civ 820 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Docket Number | Case No: B4/2016/1672 |
| Date | 24 August 2016 |
[2016] EWCA Civ 820
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE FAMILY COURT AT EAST LONDON
RECORDER BEDINGFIELD
UO14C00046
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Lady Justice Black
Lord Justice Tomlinson
and
Lord Justice Lindblom
Case No: B4/2016/1672
Ms Esther Maclachlan (instructed by Sternberg Reed) for the Appellant
Mr Paul Pavlou (instructed by London Borough of Redbridge) for the Respondent
Miss Tara Vindis (instructed by Gary Jacobs Solicitors) for the Children's Guardian
Hearing dates: 26 th July 2016
This appeal is against a care order made by Mr Recorder Bedingfield on 31 March 2016 in relation to E. E is two and a half years old, having been born at the beginning of January 2014. The appellant is her mother. Her father has not participated in the appeal proceedings. At the conclusion of the appeal hearing, in order that progress could be made speedily in resolving E's future, we announced our decision to allow the appeal, for reasons which would be given later and the purpose of this judgment is to set out my reasons. We remitted the case for rehearing by a High Court judge and it was fortunately possible for the first hearing in the Family Division to be arranged for two days after the appeal hearing and to take place prior to our reasons being available.
The appeal does not raise any points of principle or practice of general importance. It turns entirely on its own facts. We are grateful to counsel for their helpful and economical submissions which enabled us readily to see the issues and to determine them.
History of events
The proceedings in relation to E have had a more than usually chequered history. The detail is not necessary in order to explain why I reached the view that I did of the appeal and I will confine myself to the minimum. E's mother is a vulnerable young woman who was eighteen years old when E was born. She spent a considerable amount of time in the care system herself. She began committing crimes at a young age, including violent offences. She has also used drugs, particularly cannabis. She has a problem controlling her emotions and her temper and a tendency to respond to people angrily and inappropriately. She mistrusts professionals.
Following E's birth, the mother looked after E at a residential assessment centre but she found this very difficult and, by the end of January 2014, E was accommodated pursuant to section 20 of the Children Act 1989. An interim care order followed and there was further assessment. The mother began to work on her problems with an organisation which I will call KCA. There were signs of progress although there were problems too.
The local authority decided that the appropriate course for E was that she should be placed for adoption. The care and placement order proceedings were heard by a district judge who, in February 2015, made the orders sought. The mother appealed and her appeal was allowed in June 2015. As a result, the case was reheard by Mr Recorder Bedingfield in November 2015. Further assessment of the mother was carried out and it is at this stage that an independent social worker, Ms Coker-Thompson, came into the picture. Ms Coker-Thompson's assessment was positive and recommended a carefully planned rehabilitation of E to the mother's care with a package of support from the local authority. This was opposed by both the local authority and E's guardian.
In a long and very careful judgment given on 20 November 2015 ("the November judgment"), Mr Recorder Bedingfield reviewed the evidence and concluded that an attempt should be made to place E with the mother again. The evidence was that the mother could meet E's basic day to day needs and that a bond had developed between her and E. The question was whether the risks which there undoubtedly were could be managed, and the Recorder concluded that they could. He dismissed the local authority's placement order application and made an interim care order upon the basis that there should be a phased rehabilitation of E to the mother's care. He set out that the rehabilitation plan should take six to eight weeks and should be carried out under professional supervision and with support provided by the local authority. I will need to look at some of the details of what he envisaged more closely in due course but the shape was as follows. The rehabilitation process was to take 6 to 8 weeks. It was to begin with a meeting of professionals, attended by the local authority, the guardian and Ms Coker-Thompson, and held within 14 days of the Recorder's judgment, to agree upon the practicalities of the plan and to ensure that the mother was given the necessary support. Contact was to increase almost immediately to five times a week and to include the mother spending time unsupervised with E. It was contemplated that overnight stays would commence within two weeks. There was to be a directions hearing before the Recorder on 25 January 2016.
Things did not progress as envisaged and I will come shortly to the problems that arose. On 25 January 2016, the interim care order was replaced with an interim supervision order. E had begun to stay overnight with the mother on occasions from 15 January 2016 and by 15 February 2016, she was in the mother's full time care.
There was a further hearing on 18 February 2016. En route to court, the mother became involved in a verbal altercation with a member of Transport for London's staff at a station and was arrested. This was known to all parties at court. There was agreement that E should remain living with the mother but not as to the format of the order under which this should occur. The local authority invited the Recorder to make a child arrangements order in the mother's favour together with a supervision order, but the guardian sought the making of an interim care order. We were told that the Recorder declined to follow the guardian's recommendation, so it is puzzling to find in the papers two orders dated 18 February 2016 granting an interim care order. It seems that what happened was that the Recorder contacted the parties subsequently, on 22 February 2016, to say that he intended to grant an interim care order and invited the making of submissions by email, declining to hold an oral hearing to address the issue. We have a judgment from the Recorder, delivered on 23 February 2016, in which he explained how this came about and why he had concluded that an interim care order was in fact required.
The final hearing was listed for 14 March 2016 but was not effective due to illness and commenced instead on 29 March 2016 culminating, as I have said, in the care order of 31 March 2016 against which the mother appeals. The Recorder provided for contact to take place between the mother and E six times a year. E was removed from the mother's care at court and placed in foster care where she remains.
The Recorder's reasoning
The Recorder's decision represented a reversal of the plan upon which he had determined in November 2015. Important in that decision were four events during the intervening period.
The first in time of these events involved the father. In the November 2015 judgment, the Recorder had identified the risk posed by the father. The father has numerous criminal convictions and a problem with drugs and he has been violent towards the mother. However, in November 2015, the Recorder had concluded that the mother's understanding of the risk posed by the father had developed and that, as Ms Coker-Thompson advised, the risk was manageable. The mother and the father were not living together and the Recorder did not find that there was an ongoing "relationship" between them although they saw each other from time to time.
On 27 December 2015, the mother asked the father to come to her flat and, as the Recorder found, there was a "serious incident" between them in the course of which, it seems, a television was broken and which led to the mother calling the concierge who called the police. The mother said that at the time of the incident she was terribly upset about the delay in E being placed with her, that she was depressed and needed money, and had no one to turn to, so asked the father to visit. The Recorder concluded from the evidence before him in November that there was an emotional relationship between the mother and the father, and that the mother had not, in fact, reached an understanding that the father poses a significant risk of harm to her and to the child.
The next incident occurred on 18 January 2016 at a contact review. This was attended by the mother's "Leaving Care Support Worker". The Recorder had been extremely critical of this worker in his November judgment and Ms Coker-Thompson was very critical of the local authority for having invited her to attend the review. The details of what happened at the review are not readily apparent from the papers except that it seems that the mother walked out. Although he accepted Ms Coker-Thompson's criticism of the local authority for having the worker attend, the Recorder concluded that the mother had overreacted.
The altercation with the Transport for London employee on the way to court on 18 February 2016 was the next event. The Recorder assumed in the mother's favour that the employee "had said something that he or she should not have said" and proceeded on the basis that sharp words were exchanged, the mother having lost her ability to regulate her emotions. Paragraph 27 of the Recorder's March 2016 judgment suggests that, at that point in the judgment, he thought that E was present during this incident, albeit with a family support worker there as well; that was not so and the Recorder corrected the error at the invitation of counsel after the conclusion of his judgment. E has not been present during any...
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