Adoption seminar (featuring Rihanna)

[Seminar itself not featuring Rihanna. She will not be attending, or singing, or play any role in it whatsoever. She won’t even be an image on a slide.  But she will be there in spirit.   She will not actually be there in spirit]

I am told by teh interweb that Seminar originally meant ‘breeding ground’ or ‘plant nursery’ and so I am becoming the Monty Don of Adoption this Thursday when I deliver an adoption seminar.

It is available as a webinar, and you can claim CPD points for it, if you want to watch what I have to say about adoption, or you are incredibly desperate for CPD points, or if you just want to see what happens when your laptop screen cracks from the inside once my fizzog appears on it, then NOW is your chance.

NOTHING ELSE WILL DO – WHERE ARE WE NOW WITH Re B AND Re BS?

SEMINAR/WEBINAR

5.00pm – 6.30pm

on Thursday, 29 January 2015

 to be held at Crown Office Row Chambers, 119 Church Street

Brighton, BN1 1UD

followed by a Drinks Reception

Andrew Pack (Guest Speaker) who is the award-winning Legal Commentator of the year 2014 and author of “suesspiciousminds” blog will look at the rapidly developing jurisprudence relating to placement orders and adoption.

“Orders contemplating non-consensual adoption – care orders with a plan for adoption, placement orders and adoption orders – are “a very extreme thing, a last resort”, only to be made where “nothing else will do”, where “no other course is possible in [the child’s] interests”, they are “the most extreme option”, a “last resort – when all else fails” – Munby LJ in Re BS

There have been 5 Court of Appeal decisions in the last 5 weeks on this principle – is it now dead and buried?

Adam Smith will look at the British tradition of adoption orders, how Re B impacted on the UK system, and how other European States provide long term care for their children:

“The proposition of the merits of adoption is advanced almost as a truism but if it is a truism it is interesting to speculate why only three out of 28 European Union countries allow forced or non-consensual adoption. One might ask: why are we so out of step with the rest of Europe? One might have thought if it was obvious that forced adoption was the gold standard, the rest of Europe would have hastened to have adopted it.“ – Mostyn J in Re D.

This Seminar/Webinar has been registered for 1.5 CPD and will cost £15 per person.

Please make cheques payable to “One Crown Office Row”

Joining instructions and materials for the webinar will be emailed on the day

Please register with the clerks on 01273 625625 or email: clerks@1cor.com

If it is popular, I might end up doing some more of these webinar things, which I don’t know whether you will take as a promise or a threat.

I had better stress to you again that Rihanna and the Wombles do not specifically* endorse this seminar, but I know for a fact that neither of them are going to any OTHER adoption seminars this year, so read into that what you will.

Oh also, you don’t get the drinks reception bit if you attend by Webinar only – we haven’t invented some sort of alcoholic Willy Wonka thing where you can reach out to your ipad and get a glass of white wine come through the screen. If we’d invented that, we’d be out of the law game and be busy being millionaires. If you are utterly committed to having a Drinks Reception alongside your webinar, you will have to supply and serve your own drinks. Sorry.

I could maybe invent you some sort of Adoption Seminar drinking game, where you have to take a gulp every time I say “the President”  and down your glass in one every time I say “proportionality”, if that helps.  [Please don’t actually do this, particularly if you are attending the live event – I fear it might  kill most mortals]

*or indeed at all. They are at best oblivious of it. Though if they have one of those PR agencies who do scrapbook clippings of every piece of information that mentions their client, they will be utterly baffled by this whole thing.