Re D-O'H (Children) (Care Proceedings: Core Assessment)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 2012 |
| Date | 2012 |
| Year | 2012 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
Care proceedings – Parenting assessment – Core assessment – Mother having extensive history of family difficulties and alcohol abuse – Children being removed from her care and local authority completing core assessment whilst both parents in prison – Youngest child’s care plan being for adoption and eldest’s being for long-term fostering – Mother unsuccessfully applying for assessment of parenting capacity by independent social worker – Judge making final care orders – Mother appealing and local authority cross-appealing – Whether judge erring in rejecting mother’s application on basis of flawed core assessment – Whether judge erring in granting application for assessment of attachment between children and adjourning local authority’s placement application for youngest child – Whether judge wrong to make final rather than interim orders – Children Act 1989, s 38(6).
The mother had an extensive history of family difficulties dating back to her childhood in southern Ireland. She had two children, N and L, who were born in 1997 and 2008 respectively. Social services became involved after N’s birth on account of concerns about the mother’s care of her; the mother had been drinking heavily, fighting and failing to leave N with an appropriate adult. In July 2009, L was removed from her care to a place of safety by the police while she was drunk. The mother then secretly abducted L from the hospital where he was being kept, leaving the police and social services unable to find him. The family thereafter moved to England where they obtained council accommodation on the basis that they were homeless. The father pleaded guilty to criminal offences in September 2009 and was imprisoned until mid-December. Meanwhile, at the beginning of December, the mother returned to Ireland for a family funeral, became drunk and disorderly and was arrested. She was then detained in custody, there being an outstanding warrant for her arrest, but failed to mention that she had left the children in the care of a 17-year-old (C) whom she had not known for very long. C attended hospital, having injured himself, and the police were called because he had caused criminal damage. N had also attended the hospital, leaving L with friends. The incident resulted in the children being accommodated by the local authority. The mother returned to England in early 2010. On 5 February, she and the father, heavily under the influence of alcohol, stabbed C with scissors, having discovered that he had had a sexual relationship with N. They pleaded guilty to wounding and were sentenced to
16 months’ imprisonment, being incarcerated from February to October 2010. In due course, when the mother withdrew her consent to the local authority accommodating the children, care proceedings were begun, with a succession of interim care orders being made from May 2010 onwards. The initial referral had come in on 10 December 2009 and the children’s first core assessments were dated 7 January 2010. The social worker who carried out the next core assessment, dated 17 August 2010, was able to observe a contact visit between the mother and children at the prison and had a relatively short conversation with the mother herself, but the father was not seen at all, either on his own or with the children. The mother subsequently applied for an order under s 38(6) of the Children Act 1989 for assessment of her parenting capacity by an independent social worker. In addition to the core assessment, the evidence before the judge included two further social work statements, a report from the guardian, a letter from the mother’s doctor, a statement from her probation officer, and a report on alcohol testing which showed frequent excessive alcohol use by the mother for the period of mid-November 2010 to mid-February 2011. The mother gave evidence herself, and the judge also had the benefit of a report from a jointly instructed forensic psychologist, who stated, inter alia, that the mother needed to maintain change consistently over a significant period and that, without change, the previous events were likely to repeat themselves. The judge rejected the mother’s application, holding that the proposed parenting assessment took the case no further until the mother took up various interventions and made changes to her most basic behaviours. She granted final care orders in relation to both children on the basis of a care plan for L of adoption and N of long-term foster care. She ordered that there should be an assessment of the attachment between the two children and adjourned the local authority’s application for a placement order in relation to L to await that information, listing it for a hearing in November to be determined along with N’s application for continuing contact with L once he was adopted. The mother appealed against the refusal of the parenting assessment, submitting that, in light of the guidance in Working Together to Safeguard Children (2010), the core assessment was flawed in fundamental respects. She also alleged that matters were not yet sufficiently clear for final orders to have been made. The local authority cross-appealed against the order for an assessment of the attachment between the children and the adjournment of their placement application.
Held – (1) A local authority was bound by the guidance in Working Together to Safeguard Children unless good reason existed for departing from it. The guidance was clearly relevant for judges too because they needed to be aware of shortcomings in any assessment presented to them. However, that did not mean that a judge was unable to proceed without a core assessment or similar social work document even if there was other evidence available to the court which made it clear that, no matter how favourable the social work assessment might be, there were obstacles in the way that prevented the
parent from caring for his or her child. Although the core assessment in the instant case was much more limited than would have been desirable or was normally required by the guidance, not least because the parents had been in prison during its preparation and it had been done over a very short period of time, the mother’s application for a parenting assessment did not turn on whether the core assessment fulfilled the expectations of a textbook core assessment. The judge had had to determine whether a parenting assessment was necessary to provide the court with the material which it required to enable it to make a proper decision about the care of the children. She had not erred in her application of the principles relating to s 38(6) of the 1989 Act. She had stated that the core assessment was part of the assessment process in relation to parenting and had rightly taken the approach that it had to be considered along with all the other material about the parents rather than in isolation. The judge had been able to see what the mother had or had not done in the period prior to the hearing by way of seeking intervention for herself. She had not only been entitled to look at the material available, including the important evidence of the psychologist and the mother’s own oral evidence, but had been bound to do so, giving it whatever weight was appropriate. In the circumstances, she had been amply entitled to take the view that the proposed parenting assessment would take the case no further until the mother took up the interventions and made changes to her most basic behaviours. Her refusal to order a further parenting assessment was entirely appropriate, with the result that the mother’s appeal on that point would be dismissed (see [17]–[20], [24]–[28], below).
(2) In the circumstances of the instant case, it had been within the judge’s discretion to require the further provision of expert evidence in the form of a specialist report on the attachment between the children, so that she could take that into account when making the remaining decisions in the case. The report was not just important in the context of N’s application for contact with L; it was also important in terms of identifying a particular placement for L and settling the kind of contact that could take place without disrupting it. Some judges might have taken a different view on the facts and made findings straight away about whether, in principle, contact could work. Although that would have been an acceptable course, it could not be said that the judge was wrong to order a report on attachment and to adjourn the placement application pending it becoming available. It was open to her to reach a definite conclusion, as she obviously had, that L would need to be adopted, therefore approving the care plan in its main fundamental aspect but declining to make the order for placement until there was greater clarity about the type of adoption placement that would best suit his needs in light of more information as to how critical it was for him and the placement that he maintained contact with N. The cross-appeal would, accordingly, be dismissed (see [32], [34], [37], below).
(3) The judge had determined conclusively that adoption was required for L. That was not a surprising conclusion given his age, and was entirely
sustainable. It had to follow from that that she had ruled out the possibility of keeping direct contact alive by L remaining in foster care if it turned out that direct contact could not be accommodated with an adoption placement. What she had kept open was only the question of what, if any, contact could or should be arranged with N in the adoption context. The judge had therefore not been wrong to proceed to make a final care order. It was a course that had many advantages, resolving much of the uncertainty and isolating a discrete issue for determination in the...
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