RY v Southend Borough Council
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr. Justice Hayden |
| Judgment Date | 22 May 2015 |
| Neutral Citation | [2015] EWHC 2509 (Fam) |
| Court | Family Division |
| Date | 22 May 2015 |
| Docket Number | No. MA237/14 |
[2015] EWHC 2509 (Fam)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
FAMILY DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Mr. Justice Hayden
(In Private)
No. MA237/14
Mr. J. Tughan QC and Ms. S. Bradley appeared on behalf of the Applicant.
Ms. F. Heaton QC and Mr. S. Spencer appeared on behalf of the Respondent.
Ms. J. Walker appeared on behalf of the Guardian.
(For revision)
( Transcript prepared without the aid of documentation)
This hearing has concentrated predominantly on factual inquiry. As such and inevitably the focus has been on the adults and not on the child. It is important to redress that balance and to return this child to the centre of the process to re-emphasise that it is she who is the court's paramount consideration.
SL was born on 13 December 2012. Complications with her mother's labour had been anticipated and delivery had been planned to be by way of Caesarean section. In the event, the mother was admitted to hospital by ambulance due to reduced foetal movement and spontaneous onset of labour.
At birth SL was pale, floppy and had no respiratory effort or heart rate and required intensive resuscitation. Her first gasp was not until 20 minutes into life. Dr. Daniel Mattison, Consultant Paediatrician, identifies that SL had experienced hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy. This can result in a wide spectrum of disability and in SL's case she has been left with a raft of problems. Firstly, quadriplegic cerebral palsy, which means that she has impaired movement and stiffness of all her limbs as a direct result of brain damage to the parts of the brain involved in movement, tone and posture.
Secondly, she has global developmental impairment. Thirdly, she has gastro-oesophageal reflux disease. That is a condition where the stomach contents pass into the oesophagus causing symptoms. The stomach contents are acidic so the symptoms include pain from the acidic contents coming into contact with the oesophagus and the throat. They also include vomiting, feeding difficulties and respiratory problems if the stomach contents irritate the top of the windpipe or if small amounts enter the lungs. Gastro-oesophageal reflux disease is more common and may be more severe in children with severe neuro-disability like SL.
Finally, Dr. Mattison considers that there is visual impairment as a result of the deprivation of blood and oxygen to those parts of the brain involved in vision.
In the course of this hearing, I have seen a good many photographs of SL and video clips. I am very pleased to have been given the opportunity to see them for neither the papers nor the oral evidence give the complete picture of SL as she is. That material centres, as is perhaps inevitable, on SL's difficulties and health challenges. The videos and photographs reveal a little girl who is bright, curious, who has her own sense of fun and who is full of character.
There are two applications before me, the first is an application to adopt SL brought by RY issued on 10 September 2014. The second is an application brought by Southend Borough Council seeking the return of SL as a child placed for adoption back into their care. That notice, pursuant to s.35 sub-section (2) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 was served on 6 February 2015 and is, therefore, the second in time. In fact, by agreement, SL has been returned to foster care in the interim and there remains.
SL was placed with her prospective adoptive parent, RY, on 24 March 2014. The assessment of RY undertaken by Trafford Borough Council has been filed within these proceedings. In a passage within that assessment headed "Social Work Analysis", Ms. Annie Childs, the author of the report, observes as follows: ^
"RY has considerable experience of being with and looking after children with disabilities. This experience has been accumulated over many years. She also has a clear perception that children with disabilities are children first and foremost and are entitled to the same opportunities as others to play, learn, develop and enjoy life. However, she is also aware of the increased vulnerability of disabled children who may find it hard to communicate or to understand and she has given thought to how her child could be assisted in understanding their circumstances and history most appropriately and in communicating their wishes".
Ms. Childs goes on to add:
"She has a realistic appreciation of the changes which adoption will bring and has made the point that there is very little in her life which cannot be altered to accommodate a placement. She is not in paid employment and could therefore be available for her child almost full-time. She is expecting parenthood to be challenging and has prepared for this to the best of her ability".
RY is herself also a person with disability. The assessment addresses these as follows:
"RY's own health became a much more dominant factor as she moved from primary to secondary school. She was diagnosed in 2006 with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a condition which typically develops during puberty as the body enters a rapid growth phase. As a younger child RY recalls that she was rather clumsy and not very well co-ordinated, but she had not had any problems with mobility as such. At the age of 12 she started to have pain in her joints but this was put down to 'growing pains'. The pain grew worse over time and affected her mobility. She struggled to keep up with her peers, especially as her school was situated on a very large campus and classrooms were often far apart. No cause was found for her difficulties. RY's mother thought her problems might be emotional as she was being bullied at school. She was referred for physiotherapy which caused her more pain. At the age of 15, RY refused any more physiotherapy as it was so painful.
At 16 she bought herself a walking stick. Life was difficult at this time. Although RY was in frequent and in severe pain no condition had been diagnosed and her parents thought her condition might be psychosomatic. RY told me that she had begun to wonder the same thing herself.
It was when she left home to go to the Royal Northern College of Music that RY realised how much her parents had been doing for her and how much she was struggling to cope with day-to-day tasks like washing and shopping. She asked for a wheelchair assessment in her first year. Because of her contact with her friend Katie and other young disabled people, RY had no reservations about using a wheelchair and saw it as a positive option for getting around more quickly and without pain and very preferable to walking laboriously with two sticks. When she first told her mother she had a wheelchair, Deborah thought RY was 'mad' as she still did not have a diagnosis".
During the course of the assessment, RY wrote her own short account of the impact of her disability on her day-to-day life. I repeat it in full:
"Normal life. So what does this mean for me now at 28 years of age? The really really obvious bit is that I use a wheelchair. Those wobbly joints, my hips, knees and ankles, are just too wobbly for walking on. They are so wobbly that the weight pressure does not get shared through the middle of the joint like it's meant to, so trying to stand up is also extremely painful.
I've had a power chair since 2006 and have been a power chair user full-time, my only way of getting around, since late 2007. Now I weigh around 80 kilograms and while my arms are pretty strong, before I had my power chair I was self-propelling a manual wheelchair, before that I was walking with crutches and heaving myself upstairs, they are not strong enough given that general wobbliness along with a shoulder damaged in a rather nasty fall in 2007 to support my body enough to transfer myself. Transferring means moving from one place to another, wheelchair to sofa to loo to bed, so I do my transfers using a hoist which lifts me by means of a fabric sling that I sit on. I have hoists fitted in my house.
I know the location of every public loo within a 15-mile radius. The Changing Places Campaign details these and I have an excellent relationship with a company who can deliver one for hire pretty much anywhere in the country within four hours' notice so that going on holiday is no problem. The hoist in my house is set up so that I can use it easily myself without any help even to hoist other people. A good hoist setup means that even a very big, heavy and totally physically dependent person can transfer safely without a care giver needing to apply any strength to the situation at all.
Using a power chair means that some practical things are unreasonably difficulty or energy inefficient for me. For example, changing the sheets on a bed, scrubbing the loo, hanging out washing or chopping a big mountain of vegetables for dinner. Luckily I have support from personal assistants so I can 'delegate' those jobs which leave me with a lot of time and energy which can all be dedicated to caring for a child. Consequently, I would actually be far more available to a child with a high level of support need than any other single parent would be.
All the direct hands-on tasks of physically caring for a child are relatively easy for me or at least no harder than they are for anyone else as far as I can tell. The things I need support with are peripheral, practical tasks which exist outside the parent-child relationship. Cooking is a good example. I'll look in the fridge, decide what I'd like to cook, ask my PA to chop the veg and any other really physical jobs and...
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