Author Archives: suesspiciousminds

I come not to praise “nothing else will do” but to bury it

Posted on December 4, 2014 by suesspiciousminds

 

I think one could safely say that five Court of Appeal decisions in five weeks whose thrust is “don’t come wingeing to us about nothing else will do” counts as a hint being heavily dropped, much like my own heavy-handed hints that a Darcey Bussell calendar would hit the spot over this festive period.

 

Hints, of course, are not always taken.

 

[I know of more forthcoming decisions from the Court of Appeal, and I suspect there will be a few working their way through the system before Counsel for the appellant makes a difficult telephone call saying “we’re doomed, we need to drop this”]

 

Re T (Children ) (Rev 1) 2014

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2014/1549.html

 

The original case had involved 6 children, the youngest two being made subject to Placement Orders, and the older four being made subject to Supervision Orders and placed with their father.

 

The mother’s appeal was largely based on a claim that the Judge had failed to properly analyse whether adoption was proportionate and that “nothing else will do” and whether a placement with her instead might have met the children’s needs.

 

Reading between the lines on this one, mother’s counsel was put through the wringer by the Court of Appeal who have a somewhat different approach to that taken earlier in the year and last autumn.

Ms O’ Leary concedes, without hesitation, that :

i) HHJ Waller is a well known and experienced family judge who gave a long, carefully considered and thorough judgment having seen and heard the parties give evidence.ii) The Social work report was ‘exemplary’ including the way in which it dealt with the question of future placement alternatives for the children in a balance sheet form. The social worker gave evidence and the judge undoubtedly had in mind the totality of her evidence.

iii) The authors of the FAST assessment report were not required by the mother to give evidence. It was conceded on behalf of the mother that the authors of that assessment would have been the people through whom to challenge the assessment generally, or to put a case that the mother could cope with two children if not with six.

iv) The judge had not been asked to consider the return of the two youngest children; the mother’s case had been unclear, but at trial she had been seeking the return of at least three of the children (including J and O).

v) The judge not only expressed his understanding that adoption is an order of “last resort” [48] but expressed on a human level, that “it is with great reluctance and after careful consideration” [265], that he reached the decision to grant the care and placement orders.

 

The issue of interest in this appeal, other than it being yet more bolstering of an argument that appeals based solely on “nothing else will do” are not going to be cutting much mustard anymore, is that the judgment at first instance did not contain a single section in which all of the analysis and proportionality assessment was self-contained, but the Court of Appeal ruled definitively that if this material was threaded through the judgment as a whole, that was sufficient.

 

  1. The judge recognising that the care plan of the local authority was one of adoption thereafter asked himself the right question namely whether “the permanent separation from the natural family and relatives and the severance of legal ties, is necessary or whether there is any other realistic option” [277].
  2. Whilst not corralled in one section of the judge’s judgment, the positives and negatives of both rehabilitation and of adoption are threaded through the judgment; they are no less a part of the Re BS exercise for that. The judge as he was entitled to do, answered the question he had posed and decided, on the facts and in the light of his careful welfare analysis, that the children’s future welfare could not be safeguarded with the mother and therefore other alternatives had to be considered.
  3. In this case it was accepted that given the ages of the children and the absence of any family members to care for them, adoption was the only realistic alternative to rehabilitation. Where the judge had only two options available to him his decision making process is not rendered “linear” simply by virtue of his conclusion that rehabilitation is not in the best interests of the children, so leaving adoption as the only realistic option for the children concerned. The “holistic” consideration to be applied in applications for adoption had been implicitly, if not explicitly, conducted through the careful weighing up of the benefits for and against rehabilitation and for and against adoption which are found within the body of the judgment.

 

 

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Baby without a name / child removed because of father’s aggression towards social workers

Posted on December 4, 2014 by suesspiciousminds

 

The Court of Appeal have given judgment in the full Permission to appeal application by these parents from a Care Order and Placement Order decision at first instance.

 

 

Re BP and SP v Hertfordshire 2014

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2014/1524.html

 

 

This case was covered by me when Ryder LJ first gave a judgment on the papers moving it forward to fuller hearing

 

https://suesspiciousminds.com/2014/08/02/we-are-all-unquantified-risks/

 

 

[You might recall, if I jog your memory, that this was the case involving a child where there had been no naming ceremony, and the father had assaulted the social worker – and at the hearing before Ryder LJ the thrust of the argument had been “if the child was removed because the father was a risk to social workers, was that wrong?”

 

If you don’t remember that, you might remember the Telegraph’s report about the case

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10855218/Child-with-no-name-must-be-adopted-judge-rules.html ]

 

These were Ryder LJ’s strong words at that initial permission hearing (but the permission hearing could not ultimately reach a decision because the parents and their McKenzie Friends did not have the court papers from the care proceedings that would be vital in reaching a proper determination of the basis on which orders had been made.

 

These children needed protection at least until it could be concluded that the prima facie risk identified in relation to their mother had been answered one way or the other. Father acted so as to thwart an assessment of himself and in doing that he is alleged to have exposed his children to the risk of emotional harm because his behaviour is indicative of a trait that would be dangerous to their emotional health. Whether that is sufficient to permit of the removal of children for adoption is a question on the facts of this case that the documents will no doubt illuminate but it may also raise a legal policy issue relating to proportionality that the court needs to address i.e. can even a violent failure to co-operate with an agency of the state be sufficient to give rise to the removal of one’s child?

 

 

At this hearing, the papers were available, and the application was heard by three Judges. Ryder LJ gives the lead decision, and again reminded everyone that “nothing else will do” is not a legal test or principle.

 

There was no error of law made by Judge Mellanby and Judge Waller was right to dismiss the first appeal. This is not a case in which it can be argued that there was any misapprehension by either judge about what the concept of proportionality might mean and it is perhaps appropriate to remind practitioners and ‘interested McKenzie Friends’ that ‘nothing else will do’ is not a new legal test, rather it is part of the description used by the Supreme Court for the proportionality evaluation that is to be undertaken by the court. The language used must not be divorced from the phrase that qualified it, namely: “the overriding requirements pertaining to the child’s best interests” (see [77] and [215] of Re B (A Child) [2014] UKSC 33).

 

 

 

 

In relation to the father’s main point of appeal, the Court of Appeal encapsulate it like this :-

 

In layman’s terms he was saying: it is not a sufficient reason that my children are permanently removed from my care because I disagree with the local authority and will not co-operate with them.

 

 

Their decision and analysis in relation to this, having seen all of the papers (that were of course not available to Ryder LJ at the previous hearing ) was this

 

 

On the facts of another case that might be a successful submission but that simplistic analysis does not adequately examine the facts relating to this father’s antagonistic behaviour and lack of co-operation. There is of course no general duty on a citizen to co-operate with an agency of the state unless that duty is described in law. That said, these proceedings might not have been taken had father co-operated and it may not be too much of a speculation to say that, given his capabilities to provide support for mother and the children, there may not have been a need for the proceedings to be completed i.e. they may not have been pursued to an adverse conclusion had he demonstrated that he was prepared to act in the best interests of his children.

 

 

The significance of the father’s conduct is not that his children were removed because he had the temerity to argue with the local authority: to put it in that way misses the point. The welfare issue that was legitimately pursued by the local authority was that father’s antagonistic and unco-operative behaviour was indulged in by him to the detriment of his children. By way of examples, the following are relevant:

 

 

  1. father exhibited sustained antagonistic behaviour throughout the proceedings before DJ Mellanby who concluded that his behaviour was likely to continue;

 

  1. the consultant psychiatrist relied upon by DJ Mellanby was of the opinion that father would not change his aggressive behaviour;

 

  1. father had assaulted the social worker in the presence of P in respect of which he has been been convicted and since then he has also been convicted of an offence of threats to kill for which he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment;

 

  1. father was unlikely to be able to manage his behaviour even in the presence of his children;

 

  1. father prioritised his own needs above those of his children:

 

  1. by refusing to engage with the local authority to agree contact with his sons even to the extent of denying B a relationship with him;
  2. by refusing to comply with assessments or engage with the children’s guardian;

iii. caused an unnecessary change of placement for P;

 

  1. father is unlikely to change his behaviour;

 

  1. mother is unable to control father’s behaviour.

 

Given the nature of the positives that the parents demonstrated in the residential assessment and despite the recorded antagonism that he exhibited during that assessment and thereafter, DJ Mellanby gave father ‘one last chance’ in the proceedings relating to P. She did so in response to the decision of this court in Re B-S (Children) [2013] EWCA Civ 1146, [2014] 1 WLR 563 which had been handed down during the proceedings. In so doing she was being more than fair to the parents. She allowed a further examination of the evidence and of the father’s ability to change in the hope that the parents might provide a realistic alternative to long term placement away from the family.

 

 

Sadly, father failed to act on that opportunity and remained implacably opposed to any child protection mechanism or support that would verify that P was safe. He had refused access to the social work team in October 2012, he refused to engage with further assessment which would have been able to demonstrate that the positives had been carried across into the family home and ultimately when access was again refused in February 2013 it had to be obtained with the assistance of the police. Father’s written submissions to this court highlight the fact that mother would have been left in the care of the children when he was at work and in the context of the opinion that mother could not cope on her own, there was a legitimate child protection interest in the adequacy of the arrangements that the family had put in place once they were at home and no longer in a professionally supported setting.

 

 

There was ample material before both courts to justify the conclusion that the children’s father represented a greater risk to them than the benefit he provided by his capability to support their mother. The welfare evaluation of the parents was accordingly adverse i.e. the detriments outweighed the benefits. To the extent that he was able to argue, as he did at the first permission hearing, that he was an un-assessed risk, that ignores the evidence that was before the court, the father’s refusal to co-operate with assessments and the court’s ability and indeed duty to undertake its own analysis for the purposes of section 1(3) of the 1989 Act. The local authority were able to prove both of their cases and the family was unable to take advantage of such support services as the local authority might have been under a duty to provide because father refused to participate in any arrangement that would have demonstrated the efficacy of the same.

 

 

In any event, it is the parents’ case that they do not need help. They deny that the assault in the presence of P (and indeed the continuing aggression thereafter) would have had any effect on P. They deny that either of the children would be likely to be adversely affected by father’s continuing and uncontrolled aggressive behaviour. They are oblivious to the confusing and frightening effects of father’s conduct. They are unable to see that it was their own failure to co-operate within proceedings when they had access to the court to argue their case and non means and non merits tested public funding to facilitate the same that led to the removal of P. Father’s written submissions to this court continue to assert that father will not deal with social workers.

 

 

 

Against that factual backdrop, the Court of Appeal was satisfied that father’s bare assertion that he might be a risk to social workers but not to his child was not bourne out by the evidence, and thus that limb of the appeal was not successful.

 

The interesting academic argument about whether threshold is met as a result of a parent behaving aggressively to a social worker but not to a child or in the presence of a child, will have to wait for another case.

 

 

A fresh limb of appeal was raised, which was that within pre-proceedings work, an expert had been instructed, and the parents subsequently learned that this expert was on a retainer basis with the Local Authority in that they had agreed to do 20 hours of work with the Local Authority each week for 46 weeks of the year, making them really semi-employed by the Local Authority (not in an employment law sense, but leading the parents to question whether such an arrangement could still result in the expert being considered ‘independent’)

 

A separate issue arose during the first permission hearing that has become the second ground of appeal before this court. That relates to the independence of the psychologist. It transpires that on 4 March 2013 the local authority entered into a form of contract with the psychologist described by them as a ‘retainer’ by which the psychologist agreed to work for an agreed hourly rate and for up to 20 hours a week during 46 weeks of the year. Any work covered by the retainer was to be undertaken with a transparent letter of instruction and the psychologist was expected to act in accordance with the obligations of an expert (see for example, Family Proceedings Rules 2010 Part 25, PD25B 9.1(i)).

 

 

The arrangement enabled the local authority to rely upon independent expert advice that may have been obtained by them pre-proceedings where they needed it to supplement their own social workers and in-house advisors and which would subsequently be respected within family proceedings (in accordance with the guidance given for example in Oldham MBC v GW & Ors [2007] EWHC 136 (Fam) at [24] and [91]). The independence of the expert would enable other parties to join in the instruction if they chose to do so. We are told that the arrangement was revealed to solicitors then acting for the mother and each of the children in a circular letter. The arrangement was not specifically referred to in either of the proceedings concerning P and B.

 

 

The funding arrangement of the psychologist should have been notified to the court and to the parties in the proceedings not just by way of a circular letter that may not have come to their attention. The perception of fairness is very important in proceedings that can involve the permanent removal of a child from a parent’s care. There is a hypothetical conflict of interest that can be implied in the financial arrangements. There is, however, no actual conflict of interest on the facts of this case nor any complaint that the psychologist did anything that could have amounted to a breach of her obligations as an independent expert. Far from it, she was not even cross examined as to any of her opinions or the work she had done. This court has been shown no material that would have warranted cross examination other than the disagreement of the parents with the expert’s ultimate conclusion. The assertion that the error in referring to her as a ‘Dr’ in the letter of instruction or the implication that she was unqualified for the task that all parties agreed is without foundation in that no valid complaint is based on the same. Accordingly, although the situation is regrettable, the manner in which the expert was selected and did her work gives rise to no issue that is capable of undermining the determinations appealed and the alleged procedural irregularity is insufficient on the facts of this case to warrant further consideration.

 

 

Such an arrangement, the Court of Appeal say, could be capable of giving rise to a conflict of interest, and proper transparency needs to take place (not just burying the disclosure deep in the pages of boilerplate Letter of Instruction); but there had not been a conflict of interest in this case – the Court of Appeal noted that there had been no cross-examination of the expert by the parents, who would have been entitled to do so if they challenged the report.

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Figments of imagination (so many figments)

Posted on December 1, 2014 by suesspiciousminds

 

When a High Court Judge opens their judgment with a line like this:-

 

The facts giving rise to the present application are so extraordinary that they could have come from one of A.P.Herbert’s “Misleading Cases”.

 

Then I am pretty much Renee Zellweger in Jerry Maguire – “you had me at hello”

 

A .P. Herbert is my inspiration for legal writing, and his Misleading Cases one of my favourite books – I lost my copy in the RCJ last year and I still feel the ache of its absence when the weather is cold…

 

Sometimes, when you see a Judge criticise a person, you have a degree of sympathy – anyone can make a mistake, anyone can make a poor decision, anyone can have a bad day. Sometimes, you think “there but for the grace of God”

 

Not this time.

 

Islamic Investment Company of the Gulf Bahamas Ltd v Symphony Gems Ltd 2014

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Comm/2014/3777.html

 

is not, as you will have gathered from that lofty case name, a family case.

 

So you don’t HAVE to read it – it tells you nothing illuminating about family law. But if you make the time, it will pay off, I assure you.

 

In this case, a Mr Mehtra (RM) had found himself in tricky litigation in the commercial Courts. It involves a debt of £10 million, which the Court previously ordered he should pay, and now interest on top of £4 million.

 

It is, pretty self-evidently, a tricky case.

 

It has been made more tricky for RM because for about three years, his lawyer Mr Benson, formerly a partner at Byrne and Partners (now not) had been running the litigation in a peculiar way.

 

By peculiar, I mean making things up. And by making things up, I don’t mean “Oh, Mr Mehtra, I was just about to ring you, I’m so glad you’ve called”.

 

Nor do I mean ” Have you lost weight? Seriously, have you been working out or something?”

 

I mean, fabricating every single thing that he told his client, including documentary evidence to support that.

 

I’ll quickly make it plain that the Court were totally satisfied that Byrne and Partners knew nothing about this and were not involved in any way.

 

Also that the Court had not heard from Mr Benson, and that it is (theoretically) possible that he has a good explanation for it. I can’t for the life of me imagine what that might be, but there could be one. If he instructs Perry Mason, Atticus Finch, Clarence Darrow, Mrs Jo Mills, Edward Marshall Hall, Kavanagh QC, Olivia Pope, Phoenix Wright, Maxine Peake out of Silk and My Cousin Vinny they might jointly come up with one on his behalf, but I doubt it.

 

By way of flavour (and there’s loads and loads of this, I’m just pulling out some examples). Remember in relation to all of them that RM had instructed Mr Benson to make an application to Court, but that at no point did Mr Benson do anything about it in the real world, he instead just made up a detailed and plausible account of how that was going.

 

So he was :-

 

Telling his client that a silk had been briefed for him (nope) and then that the silk had been changed (well, yes, but only changing one imaginary briefing for another) – in all, four silks were dragged into this case on a purely imaginary basis.

 

Telling his client that the silk was dragging his heels and that’s why things were taking so long (well, no, because he’d never actually told the silk anything about the case or asked the silk to do anything)

 

Sending the client letters to the High Court chasing up about hearings (having never sent any application to the High Court, he obviously didn’t send letters chasing it up)

 

Sending his client fabricated orders from the High Court, culminating in even making up Judges who were supposedly making these orders

 

Sending his client a skeleton argument prepared by his silk (nope, because there was no silk instructed. He did this TWICE. )

 

Arranging a telephone conference between his client, himself and a ‘senior partner’ at his firm to discuss the case (the ‘senior partner’ was not anyone connected with the firm, but someone impersonating him)

 

Sending his client fake emails from the other side

 

Sending his client a draft letter of complaint to a High Court Judge about the delay in the case (obviously never sent, because the High Court had never been asked to do anything, so there was nothing to delay)

 

Sending his client a fake judgment in his favour from the Court of Appeal – something that must have taken some effort, because as the Court observed “It runs to 6 pages and comprises 37 plausibly reasoned paragraphs”.   The original judgment was set aside and sent back for re-hearing.

 

As the Court also point out, Hence by this point Mr Benson had constructed a fiction in which RM was effectively back to square one

 

Visiting his client in Antwerp to take instructions for an affidavit which was never filed, because the proceedings were entirely imaginary.

 

Sending another judgment from the High Court following the Court of Appeal’s decision – again, entirely made up

 

Sending letters explaining that yet another silk had attended Court on RM’s behalf to lobby the Senior Presiding Judge about the dreadful delays in the case.

 

Sending emails from High Court Judges clerks about forthcoming hearings and orders

 

And yet another High Court judgment

 

And yet another appeal – which RM won (hooray, only it never happened)

 

 

And then this is where it all unravelled – as RM started to liaise with the Court about getting a typed version of the order and judgment, and the Court rightly said words to the effect of “whatchoo talkin’ bout, Willis?”

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0-aQPbzCZE

 

 

RM instructed another solicitor, one who conducted his practice in a world where the sky is blue, and that solicitor made enquiries of the four Silks who had apparently acted on RM’s behalf, none of whom had ever heard of him. At which point, calls were made to the police and to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

 

You might be thinking that this was all some sort of financial con, but it appears not.

 

Firstly, RM had only paid £25,000 to the firm – that sounds like a lot of money to you and I, but for commercial litigation for 3 years in the High Court and Court of Appeal with four silks, it is very small beer indeed. There is no way that the huge amount of work that was being put into this fabrication was in order to trouser £25,000.   Bear in mind Mr Benson was faking not only reams and reams of correspondence, but submissions that were from leading counsel, judgments and appeal court judgments. It would have been far less work to actually just issue the application.

 

The deception practised by Mr Benson over a period of more than 3 years, as summarised above, is rightly described as breathtaking. Until the Police and the SRA have concluded their investigations much remains unclear, including his motives. What is clear, however, is that his actions will have had a significant effect on RM (and his family) who has been strung along for more than 3 years in attempts to challenge the ACO and apparent subsequent court orders and in efforts to demonstrate that he has complied with the order of Master Miller of 17 January 2007. Throughout this time RM has been effectively been prevented from entering this jurisdiction causing obvious distress to himself, his partner and his children (who live in the UK).

 

 

The motives for Mr Benson’s actions are presently unclear. The only payment made on behalf of RM during this period is the payment of £25,000 made to Byrne & Partners pursuant to the supposed consent order dated 4 July 2011. This has now been returned. None of the other payments called for in purported court orders were made. There is some evidence that other payments may have been made to Byrne & Partners but, if so, not by or on behalf of RM. There is also some evidence of a bitter family feud and of parties who might have an interest in ensuring that RM failed in all aspects of the English court litigation. However, at present this is all speculation. Matters will no doubt become clearer as a result of the Metropolitan Police and SRA investigations.

 

 

My best guess – there was a small lie – instead of issuing the application, he sat on it, and instead of admitting that when the client asked how it was going, he lied. And then rather than progressing things, he continued to lie. And then the lies just snowballed to a point where they were utterly utterly out of control.

 

 

I hope so (because the other suggestion, that he had been paid to nobble his own client is just too dark and awful to bear thinking about)

 

This is terrible, terrible stuff. It is hard to think of an example of someone doing a worse job for their client. Lionel Hutz, attorney at law would look askance at this.

 

I feel for Mr Benson on a human level – you don’t get to be a partner at a commercial law firm dealing with multi-million pound claims without being smart, and he has clearly set fire to his career and probably stands to lose everything without any apparent gain. And throughout those three years, he was probably terrified every time he had a day off or was ill, in case someone else from the firm dealt with Mr Mehtra and the whole thing unravelled.

 

You know when you have those nightmares that someone official comes up to you and tells you that there’s been a mistake and you never really passed O Level/GCSE English after all and that as a result all of your other qualifications are flawed? Imagine that level of stress and anxiety, but for real, every day for three years.

 

 

{Before you go to bed tonight, just say to yourself “I wasn’t the lawyer in that case, and I DO really have an O Level in English”, just to avoid nightmares}

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Serious case review – can a failure to call one be judicially reviewed?

Posted on December 1, 2014 by suesspiciousminds

 

In this case, Deeqa Mohammed v Local Safeguarding Children’s Board of Islington 2014   , the mother of a child, Nawaal Mohammed sought to judicially review the decision of Islington’s Local Safeguarding Children’s Board NOT to hold a Serious Case Review, following Nawaal’s tragic death at the age of 7 years and 4 months.

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2014/3966.html

 

[In this post, contrary to my usual practice – the underlining here is all to show the Court’s emphasis rather than my own]

 

Nawaal had fallen from the window of her home on the 11th storey of a block of flats.

 

The mother was claiming that this death had been as a result of neglect and mistakes by professionals and that the Regulation governing Serious Case Reviews when talking of ‘abuse or neglect’ should cover neglect and abuse by professionals as well as the child’s carers.

 

Reg 5 1(e) of the LSCB Regs 2006, setting out the functions of the LSCB

 

1(e) undertaking reviews of serious cases and advising the authority and their Board partners on lessons to be learned. .

 

And

 

Reg 5(2) For the purposes of paragraph (1)(e) a serious case is one where—

(a)abuse or neglect of a child is known or suspected; and .

(b)either— .

(i)the child has died; or .

(ii)the child has been seriously harmed and there is cause for concern as to the way in which the authority, their Board partners or other relevant persons have worked together to safeguard the child.

 

 

 

 

The importance of this is that if either of those criteria is met, the LSCB MUST hold a Serious Case Review – they have discretion about other cases, but in that type of case they HAVE to hold the Serious Case Review.

 

 

 

At the outset of the hearing, leading counsel for the Claimant, Mr Ian Wise QC, indicated that the Claimant wished to amend/refine her claim to substitute for the mandatory order (see [2] above) a declaratory order in these terms:

 

“a declaration that known or suspected abuse or neglect of a child in Regulation 5(2)(a) of the Local Safeguarding Children Board’s Regulations 2006 includes known or suspected abuse or neglect on the part of a public body”.

This re-formulation of the claim had been presaged in the original grounds of the claim (per §2(ii) of the Claimant’s Grounds) viz:

 

“Clarification of the law is necessary to ensure that failings including neglect of children on the part of public bodies give rise to a duty to instigate serious case reviews where the child dies or is seriously harmed and there is concern at the way the relevant agencies have worked to safeguard the child.” (my emphasis)

In essence, the Claimant wished to contend that the London Borough of Islington – either through its children’s services, its disabilities’ services and/or housing department – had been responsible for actual or suspected ‘neglect’ of Nawaal. In the circumstances, it was to be argued, the LSCB was required to commission an SCR.

 

 

The family had been known to Social Services and other professionals, who had been visiting – in part due to Nawaal’s challenging behaviour on the autistic spectrum, and the ‘smoking gun’ is probably this line from a social worker’s recording of a visit.

 

 

On numerous occasions in the period between 2010 and 2013, it appears that LB Islington was advised of Nawaal’s lack of safety awareness, her unpredictability, her craving for being outside and for climbing and exploring, and her challenging behaviour. In February 2013, the Claimant’s solicitors threatened LB Islington with judicial review proceedings for its failure to carry out a proper needs assessment for the purposes of her housing application. The various communications from the interested agencies (or at least some of them) are detailed in the Grounds of Claim; I have read those, together with the Claimant’s statement, with care although it is unnecessary for me to rehearse the contents more fully here. It suffices for me to reproduce a communication written by LB Islington on 25 March 2013, in which it was said that:

 

“Nawaal has no awareness of danger and enjoys climbing and jumping… if the window is open just a crack she will try and get out through it regardless of where it is … the longer Nawaal is inside the more frustrated she gets … she has no awareness of danger and enjoys climbing… This is a situation that is far too dangerous to continue this way. It is not a case of if Nawaal will fall but a case of when.” (emphasis added)

 

 

 

As the Judge said, this appalling prophecy sadly came true three months later.

 

The agencies looked at this, and considered whether to hold a Serious Case Review, but in effect decided that the death had not occurred as a result of violence, abuse or neglect. [Note here what the Coroner is reported to have said at the inquest]

 

Following Nawaal’s death, the Defendant arranged and held ‘Rapid Response’ meetings (28 June 2013 and 28 July 2013) to evaluate the circumstances of this tragic event, and in order to establish if there were (and if so what) lessons to be learned. A Multi Agency Management Review was convened, which ultimately reported on 22 February 2014.

 

On 4 September 2013, Dr. Tony Wheeler, a community paediatrician and Chair of the ‘Rapid Response’ meetings (as designated doctor for child death and safeguarding, with responsibility for reviewing services provided for all children in the area of the Defendant who have died), wrote to the Claimant attaching his report for the Coroner; in that report it was said that:

 

“The issues identified were focused on housing, and abuse and neglect were not identified as factors in Nawaal’s care or death. The consensus at both Rapid Response Meetings was that the requirements for a serious case review were not met.” (emphasis added)

 

In this regard, the reference in the report to the absence of ‘abuse and neglect’ plainly, it seems to me, referred to the provision and quality of parental care. Dr. Wheeler’s report concludes by indicating that ongoing consideration of the case would pass to the Islington Child Death Overview Panel (CDOP). Later (December 2013) Dr. Wheeler indicated that the CDOP would not review the case further until the post mortem results were obtained.

 

An inquest into Nawaal’s death had been opened; this process concluded in February 2014, with the Coroner finding (so I am advised) that “the fall was foreseen by various organisations working with the family who had been communicating concerns to the council since May 2010”. The verdict was one of accidental death.

 

 

The mother invited the LSCB to reconsider and to hold a Serious Case Review and when those discussions did not bear fruit *, issued her claim for judicial review.

 

 

(*actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that – after the claim was issued, the LSCB did agree to hold the Serious Case Review, but Ms Mohammed and those advising her felt that there was a broader issue of principle here and that it would benefit other families to have the Court give a declaration that in a case where it is alleged or suspected that neglect by professionals was a contributory factor, a Serious Case Review ought to be convened. NPIE in the paragraphs below is the National Panel of Independent Experts, a body from whom the LSCB sought advice)

 

The NPIE was duly instructed on 29 July 2014 by Alan Caton, the Defendant’s independent chair. The Defendant invited the Claimant to withdraw the claim, but she declined to do so. The hearing of the Claimant’s renewed oral application for permission to apply for Judicial Review was scheduled for 12 August 2014; this hearing was vacated by Nicola Davies J. when it transpired that the NPIE was to meet on the preceding day. In acceding to the application to adjourn, Nicola Davies J directed that:

 

“Within 14 days of being notified of the view of the Independent Panel of Experts … the Claimant shall notify the Court whether she wishes to proceed with the claim; if so the permission application to be listed as soon as possible thereafter”.

On 18 August 2014 the NPIE wrote to the Defendant in these terms:

 

“Following very careful consideration of the information provided at their meeting on 11 August, the Panel are strongly of the view that there is clear evidence of Islington LBC’s failure to protect the safety and wellbeing of child Nawaal. However, on the specific issue of whether an SCR is required, they concluded that in the apparent absence of relevant case law, or an explicit policy direction from the Department for Education as to whether a body such as a local authority can be guilty of neglect within the remit of Regulation 5(2)(a) of the LSCB’s Regulations (2006) as set out in Working Together 2013, it is not possible for the Panel to be definitive as to whether the criteria for an SCR are met. The Panel take the view that the particular issues raised by this case are more appropriately addressed either with a determination in the courts or by a clear policy directive from the Department for Education.” (emphasis added).

 

That advice was provided to the Claimant on 26 August 2014 by e-mail. On the following day, 27 August 2014, the Defendant’s solicitor wrote further to the Claimant’s solicitors in these terms:

 

“Further to my email … I have received the Defendant’s instructions. Yesterday morning the Board met to consider the Panel’s views. The Board has considered those views as sought by its referral to the Panel. With those views in mind, the Board will exercise its power to commission a Serious Case Review in this case, notwithstanding there is no duty to do so.”

 

On 29 August 2014 the Claimant’s solicitors, in acknowledging this significant development, wrote to the Defendant’s solicitors:

 

“The position generally remains unsatisfactory as in the light of the advice of the Expert Panel there is plainly a need for clarification about the circumstances in which an SCR should take place, we therefore consider that there is a real public interest in this case continuing and intend to seek a declaration as to the circumstances when a Serious Case Review should be instigated. … We write to enquire whether your client will be prepared to agree that the litigation should continue … We consider that the Secretary of State should be joined and it would be for him/her to respond substantively to the claim for a declaration. … This is obviously an unusual case. We invite you to consider our proposal carefully.”

 

On 8 September 2014, the Defendant’s solicitor sent a detailed reply rejecting the proposal that the litigation continue, and invited the Claimant to abandon the application “without more ado”. Not insignificantly, it further indicated that “the Board will entertain any contentions of institutional neglect pursued before it”; the Defendant argued that the claim was now “academic”, and without merit. Notwithstanding these representations, on the same day the Claimant notified the court the she intended to prosecute her claim.

 

 

 

The judicial review here was refused, for the following reasons [underlining in this bit is mine, for emphasis]:-

 

 

I refuse this application for permission to apply for judicial review. This decision, inevitably starkly expressed, does not reflect my considerable sympathy for the Claimant in suffering such an appalling family tragedy in the circumstances described earlier in this judgment. The refusal of this application should not be treated or understood as any indication of my views about the action or inaction of the LB Islington, or the associated relevant agencies, in the discharge (or otherwise) of their responsibilities towards the Claimant and her children.

 

However, I have reached this decision clearly for the following reasons:

 

  1. The claim as pleaded in its revised form does not enjoy a reasonable prospect of success; ‘neglect’ in regulation 5(2) does not, in my judgment, cover ‘neglect’ by a public body in failing to discharge its safeguarding duties to a child;
  2. The claim is academic, the Defendant having now agreed to conduct an SCR, which will include consideration of “institutional neglect”; there is insufficient justification in permitting the claim to proceed when there is now no lis between the parties;

iii. I am of the view that if consideration is to be given to a potentially wider remit of regulation 5(2)(a), this should be considered by the Secretary of State in the Department for Education in the first instance, not the court;

  1. The claim is premature; until the SCR has taken place, and/or the Secretary of State has considered the issue, there is no proper framework or decision, within which to consider this point of principle.

 

 

 

[As an academic exercise, the Court’s analysis of when it is proper for a Court to resolve an ‘academic’ argument between the parties is interesting – in effect it turns on this, from Secretary of State for the Home Department ex parte Salem 1997 :-

 

“The discretion to hear disputes, even in the area of public law, must be exercised with caution and appeals which are academic between the parties should not be heard unless there is a good reason in the public interest for doing so as for example (but only by way of example) where a discrete point of statutory construction which does not involve detailed consideration of the facts, and where large number of similar cases exist or are anticipated so that the issue will most likely need to be resolved in the near future”

 

And thus, having established that the Islington LSCB were going to conduct a Serious Case Review, the case itself was an ‘academic’ exercise and one which should only be carried out if it was going to have a bearing on a large number of similar cases, which it wasn’t]

 

 

In relation to the third limb – that any such change to the Regs should be for the Secretary of State, the Court noted that coincidentally the Secretary of State had given that same day of the hearing a speech on the issue of Serious Case Reviews and reform

 

My conclusion on this aspect was fortified by my discovery that, on the day of the oral hearing of this application before me on 12 November, Edward Timpson MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Children and Families, was coincidentally addressing the LSCB Chair’s annual conference in these terms:

 

“I’m still concerned about cases where SCRs are not even being commissioned. About times when debates over semantics get in the way of finding out what went wrong. This may not happen that often, but it happens often enough for me and the panel to be concerned. So, following the panel’s recommendation, we’re planning further clarification of ‘Working together to safeguard children‘, so it will now include guidance about what ‘serious harm’ actually means in the context of making decisions on whether or not to commission an SCR. And to help you with information sharing, we’re planning to clarify in Working Together the need for local authorities to notify serious incidents.” (emphasis added) (source: MoJ).

 

This announcement followed, and specifically drew upon, the first annual report of the NPIE on Serious Case Reviews (July 2014) (DFE-00531-2014) (a report which was published shortly before the NPIE sent out its advice letter in this case, the contents of which are set out at [26] above). In that report, the panel had made the following significant observations as follows:

 

“The panel’s view is that opportunities to learn from mistakes are being overlooked in the argument over where the SCR initiation line is drawn. It is essential that everyone sees lessons for children’s protection (looking backwards and forwards) as the central issue, not the need to abide only by the letter of the law.” [19]

“The panel would encourage more LSCBs to consider carrying out a proportionate SCR, even in cases where the statutory criteria are not met, rather than another type of less formal review, so lessons may be understood and shared more widely. Indeed, it is their view that use of a range of investigative tools and techniques to carry out a review in a way which is flexible and relevant to the individual case circumstances may be more appropriate than a more fixed methodology” [20].

 

 

And that thus, the judicial review claim could now be considered premature given that the changes sought might be addressed in the Secretary of State’s forthcoming guidance. It is noteworthy that both the Secretary of State and NPIE have urged LSCBs not to shelter behind the technicalities and semantics of the Regs and to hold Serious Case Reviews or something similar where there are lessons to be learned.

 

 

[It may be occurring to lawyers with a civil background that an alternative route to judicial review might have been a claim for negligence, given that ‘smoking gun’ recording and the failure to take action in the three months before that appalling prophecy came true (coupled with the Coroner’s remarks). Not necessarily easy to run a negligence claim and I couldn’t possibly make any predictions about whether it has legs or not. I’m pretty sure that as the mother was represented by a Silk in these proceedings, it is an issue which has been given some considerable thought]

 

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Over-egging the pudding

Posted on November 28, 2014 by suesspiciousminds

I seem to be jumping the gun on the Christmassy theme, it still (just) being November and having done a Santa Claus is coming to town post yesterday and a pudding one today.

 

[Quick tangent – I am myself surprised to learn that in the phrase ‘over-egging the pudding’ one is not talking about the sort of eggs that have yolks and whites. It seemed immediately obvious that it was about putting too many eggs in the pudding, but no – it means in this sense the ancient Anglo-Saxon use of ‘egg’ as in excite. So it means not whipping something up too much. Also ‘pudding’ here means sausage, not a dessert. So literally “don’t over-excite the sausage”   – apologies to anyone who typed “over-excite the sausage” into Google – this really isn’t the sort of site you were after. Just move on.   The metaphor works much better as ‘don’t put too many eggs into your pudding mixture’ than ‘don’t over-excite the sausage’  *]

 

Anyway, this case is about social workers over-egging the pudding when giving their evidence and presenting their arguments.

 

This is a County Court case (feel free to read that as being “Family Court sitting in a building which is called a County Court” if you are in the Ministry of Justice ) so it is not precedent, but it contains some important lessons and it is well worth a read.

 

Sanchia Berg of the BBC has written a good piece on it here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-30227974

 

 

The case is North East Lincolnshire v G and L 2014

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCC/Fam/2014/B77.html

 

It was a case involving a three year old child called J. His mother had been unable to care for him due to substance misuse problems and she sadly died within the course of the proceedings. The two options that came before the Court were placement with grandparents, or adoption.

 

The Local Authority and the Guardian were recommending adoption and considered that the grandparents could not meet the child’s needs. It was said that the grandparents had had a history of alcohol misuse and domestic violence.

 

The Judge disagreed, but more than that, criticised the Local Authority witnesses for taking a biased approach and not being fair.

 

 

I heard evidence over two days. I heard in particular from Neil Swaby who had been the social worker for a substantial period, and also from Rachel Olley. During the course of that evidence the local authority’s case was severely undermined. Neil Swaby seemed very reluctant to accept that anything positive could be said about either set of grandparents. When he was referred to positive things said in the papers about them, he would say things like, “Well, I suppose you could say that”. He was very begrudging indeed in his evidence and I had the clear impression that he was, for whatever reason, whether it was his own inclination or instructions from above, that he was intent on saying only things which supported the local authority’s case and was very reluctant to make any concessions which would undermine that case.

 

           I then heard evidence from Rachel Olley whose evidence was totally discredited in my view. She sought to make it a substantial plank of her evidence that J was a child who had real behavioural problems, and had had them throughout his placement with foster carers. That, unfortunately, conflicted very strongly with not only what she had said in her own statement but what was said in the adoption social worker’s statement. Again I had the very strong impression that the local authority witnesses were intent on playing up any factors which were unfavourable to the grandparents and playing down any factors which might be favourable. In those circumstances I found it very difficult to give any weight at all to their evidence.

 

 

From time to time, I provide social workers with training, and a key part of that training is letting them know that a major thing that the Court is looking for is fairness. The power of the State is substantial and it is essential that when the State is making decisions and recommendations that can have such a devastating effect on people that they are being fair. That means giving credit for things that parents do well, seeing the positives, looking for the positives – it means saying sorry when the State have made a mistake or got something wrong, and it means not cherry picking in your evidence so that you focus entirely on the bad points and ignore the good points.

 

Things like this :-

 

When he was referred to positive things said in the papers about them, he would say things like, “Well, I suppose you could say that”

 

Can only persuade a Court that the worker is not fair and reasonable.

 

{I don’t mean in this piece to have a go at the individual workers concerned – firstly, anyone can have a bad day or a bad case, and secondly, I think the mistakes that these workers made are sadly not unique to them and are symptomatic of a culture of defensive practice and a preoccupation with ‘winning’ and ‘child rescue’. What these two workers did is not unique – it is rare for a Judge to nail someone for it so vividly and name them, but it does happen. Yes, a social worker has to present their professional opinion, yes they have to make a decision, yes sometimes that decision will be very painful for the family – but within all of that, the social worker should still be alive to the other side of the argument – to see how else it could be looked at, to acknowledge the real positives that the family have to offer}.

 

The Judge did say that he had rarely encountered this sort of behaviour in evidence from social workers, but that it made it very difficult if not impossible to rely on their evidence

 

Having heard the evidence of Neil Swaby and Rachel Olley I took the view, as I have already indicated, that the local authority’s case was wholly undermined. Their concerns appeared to be grossly overstated in order to try and achieve their ends. I have never, in over ten years of hearing care cases taken the view, as I did in this case, that the local authority’s witnesses were visibly biased in their attempts to support the local authority’s case. It is very unfortunate and I hope I shall never see that again.

 

 

 

The Judge looked at the particular criticisms of the grandparents, and set those into context. (The Judge doesn’t quote Hedley J’s masterful analysis in Re L, but the spirit of it is clear to see)

 

So far as Mr. and Mrs. C are concerned, may I say, I deplore any form of domestic violence and I deplore parents who care for children when they are significantly under the influence of drink. But so far as Mr. and Mrs. C are concerned there is no evidence that I am aware of that any domestic violence between them or any drinking has had an adverse effect on any children who were in their care at the time when it took place. The reality is that in this country there must be tens of thousands of children who are cared for in homes where there is a degree of domestic violence (now very widely defined) and where parents on occasion drink more than they should, I am not condoning that for a moment, but the Courts are not in the business of social engineering. The courts are not in the business of providing children with perfect homes. If we took into care and placed for adoption every child whose parents had had a domestic spat and every child whose parents on occasion had drunk too much then the care system would be overwhelmed and there would not be enough adoptive parents. So we have to have a degree of realism about prospective carers who come before the Courts

 

 

There was a new social worker brought into the case, a Mr Nelson. The Judge was critical of one portion of Mr Nelson’s evidence – and this will no doubt strike a chord with anyone who does children cases regularly – it is a hint that things are probably untoward but that we simply don’t know yet to what extent – a technique that is really easy to assert but because it is so nebulous and flimsy really difficult to analyse.

 

Dealing with Mr. Nelson’s report I find it is significant that Mr. Nelson seems to try to revive at least one aspect of the local authority’s case which had been discredited. For example, in relation to I who from the papers I had read, appears, despite his problems, to be a nice lad, Mr. Nelson sets out the history of the problems that I has had and concludes in paragraph 3.5 by saying, “At the time of writing this report I’s problematic behaviour is not known”. There is the clear implication in that sentence that there must be some problematic behaviour from I but Mr. Nelson does not know what it is. That smacks to me of the same bias that I regrettably have to say I saw from Neil Swaby and Rachel Olley

 

 

Another criticism of the grandparents was that if J were placed with them, he would not have his own bedroom and would need to share a room – what the Judge says here is telling

 

 

Mr. Nelson also raises issues which it seems to me are not serious issues. For example he raises an issue about the sleeping arrangements. Now, I accept, of course, that in an ideal world each child would have his own – his or her own bedroom and certainly you would not have children of different sexes sharing at least beyond a certain age. But we live in fact in a world where probably the majority of families all sleep in the same bedroom and so it cannot be said that the fact that a child may have to share a room is a significant problem

 

 

The case is not decisive of anything other than the result for the individual family and individual child, but it does raise some wider issues about the importance of being fair, the importance of not setting the bar too high for family members and the importance of being realistic about your expectations and seeing things in the round.

 

 

Have a good weekend everyone and don’t over-excite any sausages.

 

 

*[As with any Etymology, you have to take these explanations with a pinch of salt.  And oh God, looking at the eytomological explanation of “take it with a pinch of salt” opens up a whole new can of worms… and so the long day wears on]

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Beware the PLO my son! the jaws that bite, the claws that catch (Is the PLO coming to Court of Protection?)

Posted on November 27, 2014 by suesspiciousminds

 

Having opened with Lewis Carroll, I’ll digress to Bruce Springsteen – if you practice in the Court of Protection –  “You’d better not pout, you’d better not cry, you’d better watch out, I’m telling you why – the PLO is coming to town”

 

Cases A and B (Court of Protection : Delay and Costs) 2014

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCOP/2014/48.html

Mr Justice Peter Jackson  (I know, it is supposed to be Jackson J, but when there are two Jackson J’s, that just causes confusion) gave a judgment in two linked Court of Protection cases that had gone on an inordinate length of time and cost an inordinate amount of public money, and ended with this exhortation to the President  (who of course wears those two hats of President of the Family Division And President of the Court of Protection)

 

The purpose of this judgment is to express the view that the case management provisions in the Court of Protection Rules have proved inadequate on their own to secure the necessary changes in practice. While cases about children and cases about incapacitated adults have differences, their similarities are also obvious. There is a clear procedural analogy to be drawn between many welfare proceedings in the Court of Protection and proceedings under the Children Act. As a result of the Public Law Outline, robust case management, use of experts only where necessary, judicial continuity, and a statutory time-limit, the length of care cases has halved in two years. Yet Court of Protection proceedings can commonly start with no timetable at all for their conclusion, nor any early vision of what an acceptable outcome would look like. The young man in Case B is said to have a mental age of 8. What would we now say if it took five years – or 18 months – to decide the future of an 8-year-old?

 

I therefore believe that the time has come to introduce the same disciplines in the Court of Protection as now apply in the Family Court. Accordingly, and at his request, I am sending a copy of this judgment to the President of the Court of Protection, Sir James Munby, for his consideration.

 

Brace yourselves, Court of Protection folk, for “streamlining” and “case management” and “standardised documents” most of which will make you wish that you had taken a different career path – for example, rather than “Law” that you had decided to become a practice subject for CIA agents working on their interrogation techniques.

The Judge has a point here, we absolutely would not tolerate cases involving a vulnerable 8 year old taking 5 years* (*although see case after case of private law children cases that drag on for years and years) and costing this sort of money.

 

  1. In Case A, the proceedings lasted for 18 months. In round figures, the estimated legal costs were £140,000, of which about £60,000 fell on the local authority, £11,000 on a legally-aided family member, and £69,000 on the young man himself, paid from his damages.
  2. In Case B, the proceedings lasted for five years. In round figures, the estimated legal costs were £530,000, of which about £169,000 fell on the local authority, £110,000 on a family member (who ran out of money after three years and represented himself thereafter), and £250,000 on the young man himself, paid for out of legal aid.
  3. These figures are conservative estimates.
  4. Each case therefore generated legal costs at a rate of approximately £9,000 per month.

 

The Judge draws a comparison between taxi drivers and advocates (and not the usual “cab-rank principle” one)

  1. Just as the meter in a taxi keeps running even when not much is happening, so there is a direct correlation between delay and expense. As noted above, the great majority of the cost of these cases fell on the state. Public money is in short supply, not least in the area of legal aid, and must be focussed on where it is most needed: there are currently cases in the Family Court that cannot be fairly tried for lack of paid legal representation. Likewise, Court of Protection cases like these are of real importance and undoubtedly need proper public funding, but they are almost all capable of being decided quickly and efficiently, as the Rules require.
  2. In short, whether we are spending public or private money, the court and the parties have a duty to ensure that the costs are reasonable. That duty perhaps bites particularly sharply when we are deciding that an incapacitated person’s money should be spent on deciding his future, whether he likes it or not.

 

It is very hard to argue against that, and there can be little worse than burning through a vulnerable person’s money in order to protect them from financial or alleged financial abuse (see for example Re G, and the “94 year old woman subject to gagging order” case)

 

What drives up those costs? The Judge identified two major things – a search for a perfect solution, rather than a decent solution that carries with it some imperfections, and a tendency to deal with every concievable issue rather than to focus on what really matters.

 

A common driver of delay and expense is the search for the ideal solution, leading to decent but imperfect outcomes being rejected. People with mental capacity do not expect perfect solutions in life, and the requirement in Section 1(5) of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 that “An act done, or decision made, under this Act for or on behalf of a person who lacks capacity must be done, or made, in his best interests.” calls for a sensible decision, not the pursuit of perfection.

Likewise, there is a developing practice in these cases of addressing every conceivable legal or factual issue, rather than concentrating on the issues that really need to be resolved. As Mrs Justice Parker said in Re PB [2014] EWCOP 14:

“All those who practice in the Court of Protection must appreciate that those who represent the vulnerable who cannot give them capacitous instructions have a particular responsibility to ensure that the arguments addressed are proportionate and relevant to the issues, to the actual facts with which they are dealing rather than the theory, and to have regard to the public purse, court resources and other court users.”

  1. There is also a tendency for professional co-operation to be dissipated in litigation. This was epitomised in Case A, where the litigation friend’s submission focussed heavily on alleged shortcomings by the local authority, even to the extent that it was accompanied by a dense document entitled “Chronology of Faults”. But despite this, the author had no alternative solution to offer. The role of the litigation friend in representing P’s interests is not merely a passive one, discharged by critiquing other peoples’ efforts. Where he considers it in his client’s interest, he is entitled to research and present any realistic alternatives.
  2. The problem of excessive costs is not confined to the Court of Protection. In his recent judgment in J v J [2014] EWHC 3654 (Fam). Mr Justice Mostyn referred to the £920,000 spent by a divorcing couple on financial proceedings as “grotesque”. In V v V [2011] EWHC 1190 (Fam), I described the sum of £925,000 spent by a couple who had not even begun their financial proceedings as “absurd”. Yet everyday experience in the High Court, Family Court and Court of Protection shows that these are by no means isolated examples: in some case the costs are even greater. There is a danger that we become habituated to what Mostyn J called “this madness”, and that we admire the problem instead of eliminating it.
  3. The main responsibility for this situation and its solution must lie with the court, which has the power to control its proceedings.

 

I hope that if there is going to be a committee or working group on solving some of the problems in the Court of Protection that they can co-opt Mr Justice Peter Jackson and District Judge Eldergill onto it – both of them are extremely sensitive and sensible Judges and the Court of Protection could do a lot worse than have its future steered by them.

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Dangerous Territory…. Assessment of a parent who is overseas

Posted on November 21, 2014 by suesspiciousminds

I have been somewhat sniffy about certain judgments this week, but once in a while I come across one that tackles a difficult issue and does so with compassion, verve and flair. This is one of those.

 

The Judge is Hayden J, and there is so much to admire in this short judgment.

 

Although some of the facts are very specific, I suspect that parts of this judgment will be of wider use to professionals and Judges picking their way through the potential minefield of assessment of a parent who lives in a place that the West might consider dangerous, and the issues that are thrown up.

 

London Borough of Tower Hamlets and D 2014

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2014/3901.html

 

 

The father in this case lives in Somalia and would be unable to come to England to be assessed. The Local Authority had explored various options for assessing him in Somalia and had been unable to get any of them in place (we’ll come onto that detail later). The father had identified an independent social worker who might be able to conduct the assessment, and the issue before the Court was whether to grant such an assessment.

 

By way of backdrop, Hayden J summarises the principles in assessing parents or family members in this way

 

I approach the task by identifying three principles:

 

 i) every opportunity should be made to explore the potential for a child being cared for by a parent;

ii) this obligation (for it is nothing less) is a facet of both the child’s and the parents’ rights pursuant to Article 8 ECHR;

iii) in evaluating the reality of the available options and the ambit of the assessment that needs to take place, it is the welfare of the children that remains the paramount consideration.

 

Weighing the measures required actively to promote the upbringing of a child by his or her parents will be a matter which is inevitably sensitive to the facts of the individual case. It will not always be “necessary” for there to be, for example, a comprehensive assessment of a parent. There will be cases where from the outset the obstacles to a parent’s wish to care for a child, no matter how genuine or profoundly expressed, will be so substantial as to make it obvious that other options require exploration as a priority eg: another family member.

 

 

Whether an assessment is “necessary” will therefore depend on the facts. Here the Local Authority, supported by the children’s guardian, submit that for a wide variety of reasons the father cannot and need not be assessed. The father, who is living in Somaliland, cannot obtain access to the U.K. but is represented by Counsel. Mr Millington, on his behalf, has endeavoured to address the obstacles that the father faces.

 

 

 

Hayden J touches on what a different climate we live in now than the one that existed when the Children Act was put together.

 

I should observe that, to my mind, even the prescient architects of the Children Act 1989 could not have envisaged the considerable cultural changes that were to take place in the United Kingdom in the 23 years that followed the implementation of that Act. British society is now multicultural. Assessing parents and family members may, quite frequently does, involve considering individuals based anywhere in the world. I do not believe that the obligation to explore the family option for a child is weakened in any way by geography, although it can provide real challenges to already overstretched resources. The viability of these options must, from the outset, be evaluated rigorously and reviewed regularly. The need for such assessments must be addressed at the very beginning of proceedings. Late identification of potential family carers abroad may bring two fundamental principles of the Children Act into conflict, namely the desirability, if possible, of a child being brought up in its extended family (where parents are for some reason unable to care for the child themselves) and the need to avoid delay in planning for a child’s future. Neither principle should be regarded as having greater weight. The recent reforms to the family justice system have sought to emphasise why it was that the avoidance of delay was given statutory force by the Children Act and the real and lasting harm delay causes to children, particularly in public law care proceedings. There will, in my judgement, be occasions when the obstacles to assessment of family members abroad create such delays that to pursue the option will be inconsistent with the child’s own timescales. These are taxing and exacting decisions but they require to be confronted with integrity and without sentimentality.

 

 

Hayden J goes on to warn of the risks of cultural relativism

 

The court must also be alive to the dangers of slipping into cultural relativism. The fact that a family member may live in a country where there are high levels of crime for example, or terrorism, corruption, or civil unrest will undoubtedly be relevant to the overall evaluation of the factors set out in s.1(3) of the Children Act 1989, but to my mind they will rarely, if ever, be determinative in and of themselves. It is the care offered by the individual that weighs most heavily and not the challenges faced by the State in which he lives. In any event these will often be facets of the child’s own cultural inheritance.

 

 

[The Judge manages to compress into ten lines something that took me nearly two pages in my article for Jordans http://www.jordanpublishing.co.uk/practice-areas/family/news_and_comment/view-from-the-foot-of-the-tower-relatives-culture-and-cultural-relativism ]

 

 

The judgment then sets out the sad history of the case for these two children, which is desperate even by the nature of such cases, the mother having pleaded guilty to causing the death of their sibling by neglect – this neglect was also something that these children suffered from though not with such drastic consequences. {the details are terrible, including the paramedic saying that the child looked like someone from Auschwitz}

 

It then sets out the efforts that have been made to assess the father, who lives in Somalia.

 

The Parties attempts to address the International Obstacles

 

 

Earlier in these proceedings the local authority, guided no doubt by counsel, Ms. Cabeza, proposed to identify a Somali speaking social worker and dispatch her to Somaliland to undertake an appropriate comprehensive assessment, no doubt tailored to the particular cultural features of the father’s own domestic situation. However it quickly emerged that Somaliland would be too dangerous for the social worker to travel to. That information came from two sources: firstly, the Foreign Office and Commonwealth Office (F.C.O) secondly from C.F.A.B. (Children and Families Across Borders) formerly, International Social Services. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office advised against all travel to Somaliland except two cities, Hargeisa and Berbera, to which the F.C.O. advise only “essential” travel. The F.C.O. offers guidance to British nationals, that is part of its function. It recommends that any British nationals in areas of Somalia to which it advises ‘against all travel’ should also leave. Similarly, any British nationals in the two towns that I have referred to, who are not there for “essential purposes”, are also advised to leave.

 

 

There is a ‘high threat’ in Somalia from terrorism including kidnapping. Terrorist groups have made recent threats against westerners and those working for western organisations. The FCO believes that this is a “constant threat”, and according to its intelligence there are terrorist plans “in existence” to attack westerners in Somaliland. It considers that terrorist attacks could be entirely indiscriminate. They could take place in crowded areas or at high profile events. They could involve government officials and places frequented by foreigners. As is known internationally, there is also a significant threat of piracy in the Indian Ocean and in the Gulf of Aden.

 

 

The FCO advises that all areas in Somalia are suffering from significant food shortages and as a consequence there has been displacement of thousands of Somali people. The consensus understanding of the guidance is that where it refers to Somalia it also incorporates Somaliland, Somaliland itself not being internationally recognised. As a result of the food shortages there is a profound problem with food security which has led to dangerous levels of criminal activity not infrequently by armed militia. There have been murders, armed robbery and a number of incidents of kidnapping.

 

 

That already complex picture is further complicated by regular outbreaks of what is referred to “as inter-clan related violence”. There is particular tension on the Somali and Puntland border in the Sool and Sanaag regions which, on the map I have been shown, can be seen to be not far from where the father lives. That is the essence of the guidance given by the F.C.O. CFAB largely follow that guidance and advise that they have no international social services provision available at all in Somaliland.

 

 

Having considered that body of compelling evidence, the local authority inevitably concluded (rightly to my mind) that they could not send a social worker as they had originally envisaged. However they have been able to speak to the father on the telephone. All of this has informed their approach to the father’s desire to care for the children. On 2nd June Mr. Brian Sharpe filed a statement. Mr. Sharpe is the Local Authority’s court work case manager. He has oversight of all the Local Authority’s public law applications and his role is to work with social workers and their managers to improve standards and support good practice in their work with children who are the subject of care and supervision proceedings. In his statement Mr. Sharpe sets out, in a succinct and accessible way, the structure of the Local Authority’s reasoning informing its ultimate decision not to send a social worker to assess the father of the children.

 

 

Firstly, Mr. Sharpe emphasises (as in my view he is right to do and as I have already outlined) that the Local Authority had initially been prepared to send a U.K. social worker from a Somali background to undertake the assessment. He further stresses that their commitment to the assessment was evidenced by the fact that they had identified three Somali social workers working in the UK before in fact selecting a particular social worker. In addition they had explored the possibility of instructing an external, independent social worker. Mr. Sharpe set out how, on receiving the advice of the FCO and CFAB, the authority came to the conclusion that it would be simply unsafe for a social worker to visit Somaliland. The decision was taken by the Local Authority’s interim head of Children’s Services. Mr. Sharpe says that is an indication of the extent to which this Local Authority has subjected this matter to scrutiny, conscious as it is of it’s obligation to the children to explore, wherever possible, the option of children being brought up by their father. The conclusion was that it would be simply “reckless” to send a social worker to the area. A visiting professional perceived to be acting for the UK government was likely, on the available evidence, to be at increased risk. In the Local Authority’s view that was an unacceptable risk and, had that worker come to harm, Mr Sharpe considered “the Local Authority would be justly censured for acting against FCO advice”. I agree.

 

 

 

 

What else could be done? Those acting for father had a rather clever solution. Noting that the Foreign office guidance was that it was not safe for any British national or Western person to go to Somalia, they found an ISW with dual-nationality. [Let’s leave aside for one moment how we feel about sending two damaged children to live in a country where it is not safe for any Western person to visit…]

 

 

In relation to the FCO website entry which has been downloaded, copied and filed within these proceedings, Mr. Millington accepts that the advice is, “Against all travel to Somalia including Somaliland …”. However, he submits, the court should consider that the FCO advice is specifically tailored to British nationals and/or westerners generally. Mr. Millington said this is clear from the content of the website:

 

 

“Any British nationals in the area of Somalia to which the FCO advised against all travel should leave.”

 

Mr. Millington says the advice is directed to westerners and those working for western organisations. The constant threat of terrorist attacks identified in Mogadishu and the evidence before me of the existence of extant violence against westerners in Somaliland, is, it is said, really confined to westerners. To address this Mr. Millington identifies an independent social worker who is not, “a westerner” but has dual nationality, both British and Nigerian. This person, a Ms. Coker, has indicated that notwithstanding the parlous situation in Somaliland she would be content to travel there, undertake the assessment and do so on her Nigerian passport. However, there is no evidence at all upon which to substantiate the assertion that she would be less likely to be at risk as apparently a non-westerner whose purpose in Somaliland could be kept covert.

 

 

Furthermore, it is said that Ms Cole would be undertaking the assessment at the behest of the English court and therefore there should be no reason for anyone outside of the father’s immediate circle to be aware of this. I have been told that she has been referred to the CFAB and FCO guidance and is nonetheless still willing to travel. It is further submitted that if the court were to determine that there should be no further assessment of the father in Somaliland then given the likely problems with obtaining a visa, such a decision would effectively have the consequence of ruling him out of the children’s lives permanently as a long-term carer. Accordingly, it is submitted that so crucial is the assessment that it plainly falls within even the narrowest concept of “necessary” within the provisions to which I have alluded.

 

 

I have to say that if Ms Cole was willing to go to Somalia to do this assessment for the miserly Legal Aid Agency rate of £30 per hour, then she is a remarkable human being, and deserves a “big-up” . The Local Authority shared my doubts as to whether it would be safe for Ms Cole to undertake this assessment.

 

The local authority opposes any assessment of the father by an independent social worker. Mr. Sharpe did not accept the assertion that Ms. Coker was necessarily at lower risk than any British national merely by virtue of her dual nationality. Moreover he outlines some real practical issues: Ms. Coker would not be able to communicate directly to the father in his own language. He would require an interpreter and Mr. Sharpe says (in my judgment with some force) that the mere presence of the interpreter in these circumstances would draw attention to their situation and would heighten the risk to her. Logically, Mr Sharpe observes that it would therefore expose at least two people to risk: the social worker and the translator. In addition, it is said, the use of an interpreter will undermine the effectiveness of the assessment in the country. To my mind that is not a strong point. It will of course very much depend on the quality of the interpreter but the Family Court is used to taking evidence through interpreters, and to evaluating the nuances of language through translation.

 

 

More significantly, to my mind, it is also contended that there is an ‘irrevocability’ about any assessment undertaken in the circumstances contended for on behalf of the father. In the U.K., where assessments of prospective carers are undertaken with interpreters, the social work team aims to communicate with and to forge a working relationship with the family. The unfolding nature of this process, to paraphrase Mr. Sharpe, often provides an ongoing and continuing assessment throughout the course of the litigation itself. That simply would not be possible in these circumstances.

 

 

Moreover, it is submitted, that the pre-requisite to any recognised assessment model, however tailored to the particular circumstances (culturally and otherwise) of the case, is that there should be some background checks eg: in relation to what is on offer educationally, police checks and an assessment of what is available in healthcare and support. Mr. Sharpe considers these enquiries to be unrealistic and also suggests that they will further attract attention to the independent social worker and her translator and thus heighten risk.

 

 

 

The Court’s decision was that it could not sanction Ms Cole being sent out to undertake this assessment, whilst holding open the possibility that another solution might be found (perhaps involving the father coming to the UK to be assessed)

 

I have come to the clear conclusion that it would be no more appropriate for me to authorise Ms. Cole travelling to Somaliland to assess the father than it would be for me to sanction or encourage any other British national. However, to my mind, that is not the end of the matter, other options could be considered. More importantly in my view, is the obligation upon the parties and the court at this very early stage to look at the real viability of any proposals that the father seeks to advance through counsel.

 

 

The Court did however, set out the broader issues in relation to the damage these children had sustained (in particular that they HAD been receiving good care from their mother before that so drastically and dreadfully stopped, and the confusion that must have caused for them) and the significant needs that they have. The Court would have to, at final hearing, take account of both that and the circumstances in Somalia as part of the welfare checklist

 

I have taken some time to set out the circumstances in which the children were discovered in October 2013 because to my mind it is important not to divorce the facts relating to the requested assessment from the wider canvas of these children’s lives. Although they are coping well, they have been subjected to a profound trauma, not only the direct experience to themselves but the experience of losing their sibling. The ordeal they have endured is not merely one of truly profound physical neglect, it is also one of acute emotional deprivation.

 

 

Having likely received good care from their mother in the past it must have been very difficult for the children to comprehend why such care was no longer available from her. I do not require a psychologist or a therapist to tell me that it is likely that this period in their lives will take a long time to assimilate and for them to understand, if indeed they ever do. They are already being provided indirectly with therapeutic support via the foster carers who I have been told are providing an outstanding level of care, largely intuitively, as they are not specialist foster carers. The children are very lucky to have them, they have shown real insight.

 

 

In due course and when their futures have been settled by a decision of this court there is, I am told, to be a referral to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (C.A.M.H.S.). Conventionally, that will involve an initial assessment and most likely some program of specialist therapeutic intervention. This court also regularly hears that trauma in the early lives of young children often surfaces in adolescence where reactivation of mental health support and services is often required. This may be relevant when considering the legal framework for the longer term.

 

 

All this reveals a situation where the children face considerable challenges for the future. In evaluating the issue of assessment I also have to consider what is ultimately contemplated by the father’s application. Even if it were possible to surmount all the other obstacles identified, the proposal would be to take these children to a country and culture entirely alien to them and one in which the kind of therapeutic support they will need will be unavailable. The theoretical is ultimately eclipsed by the practical, the children’s needs and timescales cannot be accommodated by the father’s case. Logically, it is at this stage that the wider backdrop of the civil unrest in Somaliland becomes relevant, as part of the overall balancing of the factors in s.1(3) of the Children Act 1989.

 

 

I would not wish to discourage the father from applying for a visa if he chooses to do so. I am surprised that he has not already applied; Mr. Millington tells me that this is as a consequence of a misunderstanding on the father’s part and that he thought his solicitors would have applied for the visa. I have already expressed some scepticism about that explanation. Nonetheless, if he were to be able to obtain a visa to attend the hearing and to be available for assessment, I have no doubt that the local authority would and indeed should speak with him and assess in whatever framework available, such material as they can, in order that the father is provided with the maximum advantage to advance his case on behalf of his children.

 

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Have we just given up on the notion of the Supreme Court being supreme?

Posted on November 20, 2014 by suesspiciousminds

 

After yesterday’s CM v Blackburn in which the Court of Appeal sidle up to the notion that the Supreme Court weren’t formulating new law in Re B, we now have the High Court in the form of Mostyn J just outright quibbling with their decision in Cheshire West.

 

In Rochdale v KW 2014 http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCOP/2014/45.html

 

Mostyn J was sitting in the Court of Protection and was faced with an application as to whether KW’s liberty was being deprived and if so ought the Court to sanction it.

  1. Katherine is aged 52. She is severely mentally incapacitated, to use the new language of the MCA; she is of “unsound mind” to use the old language of Article 5. She suffered brain damage while undergoing surgery to correct arteriovenous malformation in 1996[1], when aged only 34. This resulted in a subarachnoid haemorrhage and long term brain damage. She was left with cognitive and mental health problems, epilepsy and physical disability. She was discharged from hospital into a rehabilitation unit and thence to her own home, a bungalow in Middleton, with 24/7 support.
  2. In April 2013 Katherine was admitted to hospital. Her mental health had declined. In May 2013 she was transferred to a psychiatric ward, and later to another hospital. On 28 June 2013 she was discharged and transferred to a care home where she stayed until 14 April 2014, when she returned home. For appreciable periods between 28 June 2013 and 14 April 2014 Katherine’s confinement to the care home was not authorised under the terms of the MCA. On 26 June 2014 Katherine, acting by her litigation friend, made a claim for damages under Articles 5 and 8 of the Convention. On any view she had suffered an unlawful deprivation of liberty during those periods when her confinement was not authorised under the MCA. Her claim has been settled with modest compensation and a written apology. I approve the terms of the settlement.
  3. Physically, Katherine is just ambulant with the use of a wheeled Zimmer frame. Mentally, she is trapped in the past. She believes it is 1996 and that she is living at her old home with her three small children (who are now all adult). Her delusions are very powerful and she has a tendency to try to wander off in order to find her small children. Her present home is held under a tenancy from a Housing Association. The arrangement entails the presence of carers 24/7. They attend to her every need in an effort to make her life as normal as possible. If she tries to wander off she will be brought back. The weekly cost of the arrangement is £1,468.04. Of this £932.52 is paid by Rochdale and £535.52 by the local NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (“CCG”).

 

We have here therefore

(a) a person who lacks capacity

(b) a person who is being cared for by the State  (albeit in the setting of a foster ‘home’ rather than in residential care)

(c) a person who tries to leave that accommodation and when she tries is prevented from doing so, and if she gets out is brought back

 

On the basis of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Cheshire West, this appears to be a deprivation of liberty, but Mostyn J felt otherwise.

I find it impossible to conceive that the best interests arrangement for Katherine, in her own home, provided by an independent contractor, but devised and paid for by Rochdale and CCG, amounts to a deprivation of liberty within Article 5. If her family had money and had devised and paid for the very same arrangement this could not be a situation of deprivation of liberty. But because they are devised and paid for by organs of the state they are said so to be, and the whole panoply of authorisation and review required by Article 5 (and its explications) is brought into play. In my opinion this is arbitrary, arguably irrational, and a league away from the intentions of the framers of the Convention.

 

Mostyn J goes on to conduct a philosophical exercise on the nature of liberty  (I can highly recommend Alex Ruck’s blog on the judgment – he says everything that I wanted to say, and far more elegantly http://www.mentalcapacitylawandpolicy.org.uk/js-mill-strikes-back-mostyn-j-takes-on-the-supreme-court/)

 

It is plain that Mostyn J is aware that he is bound by Cheshire West, although making it plain that he doesn’t himself agree with the Supreme Court, but he attempts to distinguish the case (in ways that frankly, one might consider the Supreme Court had already ruled on), concluding that this particular issue needs to be looked at again by the Supreme Court and granting leave to appeal in order to facilitate that.

  1. The opinions of the majority are binding on me and I must loyally follow them even if I personally agree with the view of Parker J and the Court of Appeal in MIG and MEG; with the Court of Appeal in Cheshire West; and with the minority in the Supreme Court[2]. There is a similarity between this case and that of MIG inasmuch as both involve so called constraints on an incapacitated person living at home. In determining the factual question I cannot take into account the benign motives of Rochdale in providing the care arrangement or of Katherine’s contentment with it. Nor can I take into account the designed normality of the arrangement in Katherine’s own home.
  2. As I have shown, a key element of the objective test of confinement is whether the person is “free to leave”. This is part of the acid test. “Free to leave” does not just mean wandering out of the front door. It means “leaving in the sense of removing [herself] permanently in order to live where and with whom [she] chooses” (see JE v DE and Surrey County Council [2006] EWHC 3459 (Fam)[2007] 2 FLR 1150 per Munby J at para 115, implicitly approved in the Supreme Court at para 40). This is the required sense of the second part of the acid test.
  3. I do not find the test of the Strasbourg court in HL v United Kingdom 40 EHRR 761, at para 91, where it refers to the “concrete situation” of the protected person, as being of much assistance. The adjective “concrete” means that that I should look for an actual substance or thing rather than for an abstract quality. That is to state the obvious. Plainly, I will be looking only at Katherine’s actual personal circumstances and not at any abstractions.
  4. Katherine’s ambulatory functions are very poor and are deteriorating. Soon she may not have the motor skills to walk even with her frame. If she becomes house-bound or bed-ridden it must follow that her deprivation of liberty just dissolves. It is often said that one stress-tests a proposition with some more extreme facts. Imagine a man in hospital in a coma. Imagine that such a man has no relations demanding to take him away. Literally, he is not “free to leave”. Literally, he is under continuous supervision. Is he in a situation of deprivation of liberty? Surely not. So if Katherine cannot realistically leave in the sense described above then it must follow that the second part of the acid test is not satisfied.
  5. By contrast MIG was a young woman with full motor functions, notwithstanding her problems with her sight and hearing. She had the physical capacity to leave in the sense described. She had sufficient mental capacity to make the decision to leave, in the sense described. If she tried she would be stopped. Therefore, it can be seen that in her case both parts of the acid test was satisfied.
  6. In my judgment there is a very great difference between the underlying facts of MIG’s case and of this case notwithstanding that in both cases the protected person lives at home.
  7. It is my primary factual finding that in Katherine’s case the second part of the acid test is not satisfied. She is not in any realistic way being constrained from exercising the freedom to leave, in the required sense, for the essential reason that she does not have the physical or mental ability to exercise that freedom.
  8. I am not suggesting, of course, that it is impossible for a person ever to be deprived of his liberty by confinement in his or her own home. In the field of criminal law this happens all the time. Bail conditions, or the terms of a release from prison on licence, routinely provide for this. However, I am of the view that for the plenitude of cases such as this, where a person, often elderly, who is both physically and mentally disabled to a severe extent, is being looked after in her own home, and where the arrangements happen to be made, and paid for, by a local authority, rather than by the person’s own family and paid for from her own funds, or from funds provided by members of her family[3], Article 5 is simply not engaged.

 

 

For me, Alex Ruck puts it perfectly in his analysis

 

Mostyn J’s conception of freedom to leave is fundamentally predicated upon a concept that of liberty that is dependent upon a person’s ability to exercise that right, either themselves or by another. A person who is severely physically disabled – and therefore house-bound – could not, on Mostyn J’s analysis, be considered to be deprived of their liberty. It is, however, extremely difficult to square that analysis with the conclusion of Lady Hale (with whom Lord Kerr agreed) that liberty must mean the same for all, regardless of whether they are mentally or physically disabled (see the discussion at paragraphs 33-36).

 

We are once again getting back to a conflation of two questions – whether someone is deprived of their liberty, with whether it is justified. Katherine’s circumstances almost certainly make any deprivation justifiable, but to say that her liberty is not deprived as a result of her physical and mental difficulties is at right angles to the decision of the Supreme Court in Cheshire West.

 

We shall see what they say, if the case finally gets to them, but given how long we waited for Cheshire West to be resolved, the prospect of further doubt in this area is not appealing.

{I myself like to ‘stress-test’ deprivation of liberty cases by looking back to L and Bournewood – I’m not sure L would be helped by this sort of formulation}

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Nothing else will do – In which Nails are placed in coffins, and heads of pins are danced upon

Posted on November 19, 2014 by suesspiciousminds

 

The third Court of Appeal decision in a month to backtrack from “nothing else will do” and this one does so very powerfully. (previous two Re MH and Re M, both blogged about last month)

 

To the point of saying that it is not a test.

 

In case you are pushed for time to read this, I’m afraid that you still have to write/read all the analysis of the various options, and the Court still have to consider those options and analyse them, but the Court of Appeal say that “nothing else will do” isn’t a test, but a process of deductive reasoning.

 

In case you are new to the whole adoption debate, then welcome, and in a nutshell there appears in the last year to have been a tension between the Government (pushing a pro adoption agenda, including telling social workers to stop thinking of adoption as a last resort) and the senior judiciary, who have been mindful of the principle that adoption is a last resort.

 

 

Even the President of the Family Division has acknowledged this tension

 

 

http://www.localgovernmentlawyer.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18284:top-judge-recognises-tension-over-court-rulings-and-guidance-on-adoption&catid=54:childrens-services-articles

 

 

the Department for Education said: “The local authorities that are most successful in finding adoptive families for looked after children will generally be those with a very clear care planning process that always considers adoption as a possible permanence option and not an option of last resort.”

 

Asked about the issue by Local Government Lawyer at a press conference yesterday (29 April), Sir James responded: “Under our system Parliament makes the law in passing a statute. Parliament, I emphasise; not the Government. It’s Parliament that legislates. It is for the judges to decide what the statute means.

 

“The Supreme Court has ruled what it believes the statute means and under our system that is the definitive judicial view but of course under our system the relevant statutes can be changed as Parliament wishes to do so.”

 

But the President added: “I’d be foolish not to acknowledge as I do that there is a clear tension between what the Supreme Court said in Re B in the summer of last year and what the Government had said in guidance which it issued only a few months before in the spring of last year…..

 

“So there is a tension there but under our system Parliament makes the law; the judges interpret the law and if Parliament does not agree with the judges’ interpretation of the statute they passed, then the remedy is for Parliament to change the law.”

 

The Family President added: “In saying that I think I’ve acknowledged that there is that tension there. But I appreciate that on the ground, as it were, for the directors of social services; for the social workers dealing with adoption cases; it must be slightly difficult to know exactly what they should be doing given that tension.”

 

 

 

You might want to put a mental Post-it Note on the President (the lead author of Re B-S) saying THIS

 

The Supreme Court has ruled what it believes the statute means and under our system that is the definitive judicial view

 

Because the Court of Appeal (Ryder LJ lead judgment) are currently saying THIS

 

 

Turning then to the issue in this appeal. I do not accept that Re B and Re B-S re-draw the statutory landscape. The statutory test has not changed. I have set it out at [26] above. It is unhelpful to add any gloss to that statutory test as the gloss tends to cause the test to be substituted by other words or concepts.

 

 

Have fun reconciling those two things.

 

The case is CM v Blackburn with Darwin Council 2014 (lead judgment Ryder LJ)

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2014/1479.html

 

 

The point of the appeal was an issue that immediately came into most people’s minds following Re B-S – dual planning.

 

It is not (or was not) unusual, to see a care plan that said “we will search for an adoptive placement for the child for 6 months, and if that is not successful, then a foster placement will be found”

 

As a matter of law, based on the principle of “nothing else will do”, how could a Court say that fostering would not do in order to make the Placement Order, when the plan envisages fostering being a possible outcome? Either it is permissible to say “adoption is better than fostering for this child, but both would do”   or on a strict interpretation of “nothing else will do” the Court should reject the Placement Order as there is clearly something else that will do (fostering, explicitly provided for in the dual care plan as the fallback)

 

The Local Authority in such cases aren’t saying that fostering won’t meet the needs of the child, it is saying that adoption is a BETTER way of meeting those needs. (which for me is fine and common sense – they have to make the case, but a Court should have that discretion)

 

Is that compatible with “nothing else will do” ?

 

Well, given cases in October (and cough, the adoption figures and political uproar), it is not surprising that the Court of Appeal say “yes, dual planning is compatible with the law”

 

 

 

Here’s what they have to say about “nothing else will do”   (and it is not only a major shift, but it probably makes large parts of the Myth-Busting document now accurate, or at least more accurate than it was before this judgment was published – so it was a fortune-telling document as well as a Myth-Busting one)

 

 

Turning then to the issue in this appeal. I do not accept that Re B and Re B-S re-draw the statutory landscape. The statutory test has not changed. I have set it out at [26] above. It is unhelpful to add any gloss to that statutory test as the gloss tends to cause the test to be substituted by other words or concepts. The test remains untouched but the court’s approach to the evidence needed to satisfy the test and the approach of practitioners to the existing test without doubt needed revision. That can be seen in graphic form in the comments of the President in Re B-S at [30]

 

“we have real concerns about the recurrent inadequacy of the analysis of reasoning put forward in support of the case for adoption, both in the materials put before the court by local authorities and guardians and also in too many judgments. This is nothing new, but it is time to call a halt.”

 

 

 

Yes, you have read that right – the Court of Appeal are now calling nothing else will do an unnecessary gloss on the statutory test. A gloss that a year ago they were embracing and thrusting on us all. We are rewriting history here – in the words of Kevin Costner “We’re through the looking glass here, people”.

 

 

Someone else might hear make a cruel remark about irony and unfortunate glosses to statute, but that would be beneath me.

 

 

The Court of Appeal goes on

 

Neither the decision of the Supreme Court nor that of this court in Re B-S has created a new test or a new presumption. What the decisions do is to explain the existing law, the decision making process that the court must adopt to give effect to Strasbourg jurisprudence and domestic legislation and the evidential requirements of the same.

 

 

(That will delight the Government and Mr Narey – as this is their line. But go on, please)

 

 

A court making a placement order decision must conduct a five part exercise. It must undertake a welfare analysis of each of the realistic options for the child having regard among any other relevant issues to the matters set out in section 1(4) of the 2002 Act (the ‘welfare checklist’). That involves looking at a balance sheet of benefits and detriments in relation to each option. It must then compare the analysis of each option against the others. It must decide whether an option and if so which option safeguards the child’s welfare throughout her life: that is the court’s welfare evaluation or value judgment that is mandated by section 1(2) of the Act. It will usually be a choice between one or more long term placement options. That decision then feeds into the statutory test in sections 21(3)(b) and 52 of the 2002 Act, namely whether in the context of what is in the best interests of the child throughout his life the consent of the parent or guardian should be dispensed with. The statutory test as set out above has to be based in the court’s welfare analysis which leads to its value judgment. In considering whether the welfare of the child requires consent to be dispensed with, the court must look at its welfare evaluation and ask itself the question whether that is a proportionate interference in the family life of the child. That is the proportionality evaluation that is an inherent component of the domestic statutory test and a requirement of Strasbourg jurisprudence.

 

 

[You may be seeing here that there is no mention of the least interventionist order, last resort, draconian nature of the order – that’s all bound up here in proportionality. But it is fairly pivotal and important that it was the specific issue of whether adoption was a proportionate answer and the circumstances in which it might be that led to the ECHR decision in Y v UK which was at the heart of Re B and Re B-S. It is a strange omission, and one which is also conspicuous by its absence in the Myth-Busting document]

 

That is what ‘nothing else will do’ means. It involves a process of deductive reasoning. It does not require there to be no other realistic option on the table, even less so no other option or that there is only one possible course for the child. It is not a standard of proof. It is a description of the conclusion of a process of deductive reasoning within which there has been a careful consideration of each of the realistic options that are available on the facts so that there is no other comparable option that will meet the best interests of the child.

 

 

“nothing else will do” is not a test – that noise you may hear as you read this is your eyes rolling. It is just a description of the process of deductive reasoning. Therefore, if the Judge has carried out the balancing exercise and answers the question “Am I satisfied that nothing else but adoption will do?” with a “No”, can he or she make the Placement Order? If it is not a test, but just a description of a process, then possibly.

 

I mean, this is just flat out strange – the Supreme Court made themselves rather plain, I thought. But now we are told that this is not in fact a test, and we should just read the word as ‘requires’

 

I’ll deviate for a moment

 

Supreme Court, Re B June 2013. http://www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed114409

 

We are all familiar with Lady Hale’s key paragraphs, but I’ll set them out, because they seem to be vanishing before our eyes. Note that on the issue of “nothing else will do” she says that all of the Supreme Court Judges agree on that. And she is right. Although she gave a minority judgment in the case overall (i.e whether the Judge had got the individual case right or wrong), on this aspect, these paragraphs reflect the decision of the Supreme Court.

 

  1. Perhaps above all, however, this case raises the issue of when it is proper for an appellate court to interfere in the decisions of the trial judge who has heard and read all the evidence and reached his conclusions after careful cogitation following many days of hearing in court and face-to-face contact with the people involved. We all agree that an appellate court can interfere if satisfied that the judge was wrong. We also all agree that a court can only separate a child from her parents if satisfied that it is necessary to do so, that “nothing else will do”.

 

 

  1. Nevertheless, it is quite clear that the test for severing the relationship between parent and child is very strict: only in exceptional circumstances and where motivated by overriding requirements pertaining to the child’s welfare, in short, where nothing else will do.

 

  1. But that is not the end of the story. We all agree that an order compulsorily severing the ties between a child and her parents can only be made if “justified by an overriding requirement pertaining to the child’s best interests”. In other words, the test is one of necessity. Nothing else will do.

 

 

 

Let’s now look at the words of the President in Re B-S on this issue

 

  1. Section 52(1)(b) of the 2002 Act provides, as we have seen, that the consent of a parent with capacity can be dispensed with only if the welfare of the child “requires” this. “Require” here has the Strasbourg meaning of necessary, “the connotation of the imperative, what is demanded rather than what is merely optional or reasonable or desirable”: Re P (Placement Orders: Parental Consent) [2008] EWCA Civ 535, [2008] 2 FLR 625, paras 120, 125. This is a stringent and demanding test.

 

  1. Just how stringent and demanding has been spelt out very recently by the Supreme Court in In re B (A Child) (Care Proceedings: Threshold Criteria) [2013] UKSC 33, [2013] 1 WLR 1911. The significance of Re B was rightly emphasised in two judgments of this court handed down on 30 July 2013: Re P (A Child) [2013] EWCA Civ 963, para 102 (Black LJ), and Re G (A Child) [2013] EWCA Civ 965, paras 29-31 (McFarlane LJ). As Black LJ put it in Re P, Re B is a forceful reminder of just what is required.

 

  1. The language used in Re B is striking. Different words and phrases are used, but the message is clear. 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”, to be made “only in exceptional circumstances and where motivated by overriding requirements pertaining to the child’s welfare, in short, where nothing else will do”: see Re B paras 74, 76, 77, 82, 104, 130, 135, 145, 198, 215.

 

 

 

And

 

  1. It is time to draw the threads together and to spell out what good practice, the 2002 Act and the Convention all demand.

 

 

 

All of these “striking” words, we are now told, were not intended to amount to any change in the legal test or a gloss on the statute. Anybody interpreting the word ‘require’ in the wording of the statute as now incorporating those principles is just wrong, or that a Judge is expected to answer a question about whether “nothing else will do but adoption” is wrong.

.

 

52 (1)The court cannot dispense with the consent of any parent or guardian of a child to the child being placed for adoption or to the making of an adoption order in respect of the child unless the court is satisfied that— .

(a)the parent or guardian cannot be found or is incapable of giving consent, or .

(b)the welfare of the child requires the consent to be dispensed with.

 

Re B-S is thus, presumably, case management guidance rather than law. One wonders, if that’s the case, why it wasn’t all set out in a Practice Direction rather than a judgment, given that the primary author of Re B-S had the power to do that. [I don’t believe for a second that Re B-S wasn’t intended as an authority that Judges who failed to properly engage with proportionality and necessity and the Re B principles would be at risk of appeal]

 

 

I will give a caveat to all of this – I’m sure that there were very good Judges up and down the country who were grappling with these issues in their judgments before Re B, and were properly considering the pros and cons of adoption and were not doing as criticised in Re G by a linear process of “if I’ve ruled out mum, dad and grandparents, what is left is adoption, so adoption IS the last resort”. For those very good Judges, Re B and Re B-S didn’t really change the way they were doing those judgments and making their decisions. But it was very plain from the volume of successful appeals that there were Judges who weren’t.

 

(And I don’t think that those were bad judges or flawed judges – it was rather that it had become general practice to use that linear model and it was only once McFarlane LJ highlighted the inherent flaws in it in Re G that some shifted.   From the published judgments that I have read on Bailii in the last year, a surprising number of placement order judgments still fail to do that and simply replace analysis by quoting large chunks of the caselaw and saying “I have considered this” thus failing to see the point that the Court of Appeal appear to have been making in their condemnation of stock phrases and judicial window-dressing)

 

Were Re B and Re B-S new law, a fresh interpretation of the word ‘requires’ in the statute, or a gloss? Or were they as is being suggested now, a reinforcement and reminder of the existing law containing nothing fresh other than case-management guidance? We could dance on the head of a pin forever on that one.

 

If it was nothing fresh, it is surprising that so many successful appeals were happening last autumn and winter …

 

 

 

Back to the Court of Appeal in this particular case.

 

 

The words of Lord Nicholls in In re B (A Minor) (Adoption: Natural Parent) [2001] UKHL 70, [20012] 1 WLR 258 cited with approval in the Supreme Court in Re B remain apposite:

 

“[16] … There is no objectively certain answer on which two or more possible courses is in the best interests of a child. In all save the most straightforward cases, there are competing factors, some pointing one way and some another. There is no means of demonstrating that one answer is clearly right and another clearly wrong. There are too many uncertainties involved in what, after all, is an attempt to peer into the future and assess the advantages and disadvantages which this or that course will or may have for the child.”

This court has on two recent occasions highlighted the way in which the proportionality evaluation is being misconstrued by practitioners. In each case practitioners were reminded to use the concept that was described by the Supreme Court in Re B. In M-H (A Child) [2014] EWCA Civ 1396 Macur LJ at [8] said:

 

“…I note that the terminology frequently deployed in arguments to this court and, no doubt to those at first instance, omit a significant element of the test as framed by both the Supreme Court and this court, which qualifies the literal interpretation of “nothing else will do”. That is, the orders are to be made “only in exceptional circumstances and where motivated by the overriding requirements pertaining to the child’s best interests.” (See In Re B, paragraph 215)….”

In Re M (A Child) (Long Term Foster Care) [2014] EWCA Civ 1406 Black LJ said:

 

“What is necessary is a complex question requiring an evaluation of all of the circumstances. As Lord Neuberger said at [77] of Re B, speaking of a care order which in that case would be very likely to result in the child being adopted:

 

“It seems to me inherent in section 1(1) [Children Act 1989] that a care order should be the last resort, because the interests of the child would self- evidently require her relationship with her natural parents to be maintained unless no other course was possible in her interests. ” (my emphasis)

 

I emphasise the last phrase of that passage (“in her interests”) because it is an important reminder that what has to be determined is not simply whether any other course is possible but whether there is another course which is possible and in the child’s interests.”

With respect, I agree.

 

It is in the very nature of placement proceedings that in many of them there will be alternative options that are at least hypothetically feasible and which may have some merit. The fact that, after consideration of the evidence, the court on an analysis of the options chooses adoption over another option does not mean that such a choice is tainted because something else may have been reasonable and available. The whole purpose of a proportionality evaluation is to respect the rights that are engaged and cross check the welfare evaluation i.e. the decision is not just whether A is better than B, it is also whether A can be justified as an interference with the rights of those involved. That is of critical importance to the way in which evidence is collated and presented and the way in which the court analyses and evaluates it.

 

My answers to the questions posed by Mr Rowley are as follows:

 

  1. a) The judge’s methodology was right. She conducted a fact finding exercise, a welfare analysis of each realistic option, a comparative welfare evaluation and a proportionality evaluation.
  2. b) The statutory tests are not re-drawn. ‘Nothing else will do’ is the conclusion of a proportionality evaluation after a process of deductive reasoning not a new presumption and not a standard of proof.
  3. c) It is not necessary to have a contingency in a care plan although it is desirable. A timetable within which a local authority have to implement a substantive order once proceedings have concluded is beyond the jurisdiction of the court and is not part of the prescribed content of a care plan.
  4. d) Recognising the possibility of failure by a contingency plan is appropriate. That is quite different from deciding that something other than adoption is required.
  5. e) There is no objection in principle to dual planning in an appropriate case. This case was appropriate because the placement decision was neither conditional upon the happening of an event nor the success of some extraneous process such as therapy. It was not a decision that one of two options would do.

 

 

 

I think the CoA go further here than in the last two cases – in those, there was still a concept that “nothing else will do” being a test, albeit a more nuanced test in which the words meant “nothing else that will properly meet the needs of the child”

 

Here, they say explicitly

 

The fact that, after consideration of the evidence, the court on an analysis of the options chooses adoption over another option does not mean that such a choice is tainted because something else may have been reasonable and available

 

That’s not saying that the Court rejected the other options, or ruled them out, or concluded that they were not capable of meeting the child’s needs. That is outright saying that even with a reasonable and available option, adoption can still be the choice of the Court.

 

Although in saying

 

Recognising the possibility of failure by a contingency plan is appropriate. That is quite different from deciding that something other than adoption is required.

 

And

 

It was not a decision that one of two options would do.

 

 

Are they in fact saying that there WASN’T a judicial acceptance that long-term fostering was capable of meeting the child’s needs and that the Court was just approving the plan of adoption by rejecting all of the other options and that long-term fostering was not a plan, but a contingency in the care plan that the Court wasn’t required to consider?

 

That’s one way of reading the Court of Appeal’s answers to those questions which still IS compatible with the nuanced / glossed “nothing else will do”   (there is no other option that is capable of meeting this child’s needs in a satisfactory way). I wouldn’t have much quarrel if the case had been decided in that narrow way – it seems to me that you could resolve it by deciding that adoption was the plan, making a Placement Order and advising the LA that a revocation application should be lodged if the plan is formally to be changed.

 

Let us be honest, in a care plan of “search for adoption for 6 months, if unsuccessful long-term foster care”, which of those two things is the ‘last resort’?   It isn’t adoption, that’s the first preference. Long-term fostering there is the last resort. When the Court makes a Placement Order in those circumstances, it really isn’t saying that adoption is the last resort; it is saying that adoption is a better way of meeting the child’s needs than the other available alternative. [Which arguably just falls under s1 of the Children Act and is a good thing, but in that case, the talk of ‘last resort’ is a sham]

 

 

 

Why, one might almost think, if one was very cynical, that the fact that Re B looked like it was heading for the ECHR led the Court of Appeal to take pre-emptive action to bolster adoption before any ECHR decision “look, we’re being proportionate!”   and now that we know Re B isn’t going to the ECHR and the practical import is being seen, there’s a backtrack.

 

I mean, I myself am not that sort of cynical person, so that of course isn’t what’s happened.

 

What has happened is that we naughty, dastardly lawyers have deliberately confused the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal saying that for the wording of the statute, “requires” means literally nothing else will do, and taken that to be a test to be followed, whereas all they meant was the quality of evidence needed for a Judge to be satisfied that the child’s welfare ‘requires’ that parental consent be dispensed with is higher.

 

And all of those successful appeals based on that point were… I’m afraid that my imagination is breaking down there and I can’t find a plausible explanation why those appeals were allowed if the position really is and always was what the Court of Appeal now say.

 

Why weren’t they rejecting all those appeals and saying “no, people have got this wrong, nothing else will do doesn’t mean that at all?”

 

If we can be honest again for a moment, imagine that a Judge in a Placement Order case in September 2013, or even September 2014 had said “I have been referred to the cases of Re B and Re B-S, but I don’t need to follow those and I am sticking to the law exactly as it was in 2012”   would the Court of Appeal have backed that

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Who you gonna call? Myth-busters

Posted on November 17, 2014 by suesspiciousminds

 

 
There’s been quite a lot of publicity about Martin Narey’s Myth-Busting document on adoption, following the recent adoption statistics taking a hit – something that any one who had been reading the case law in the last 18 months had seen coming a country mile away.

Apparently that’s all just a misunderstanding by dopey Local Authority social workers and lawyers, and it is all our fault.   The Court of Appeal overturning case after case last summer had nothing to do with it.
[Tim Loughton, the former Children’s Minister instead says that the problems are due to Judges sulking about legal aid cuts and slowing things down deliberately. At least, according to the Telegraph he said that. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11224155/Judges-resentment-toward-Government-adding-to-adoption-slump-ex-minister-warns.html ]

 

Click to access ALB%20-%20Impact%20of%20Court%20Judgments%20on%20Adoption%20-%20November%202014.pdf

The national Adoption Leadership Board, Family Justice Board, and the Department for Education have heard regularly that these changes are a response to a number of high profile court judgments on care and adoption order cases, notably Re B and Re B-S. Some of this feedback suggests a degree of misinterpretation of these judgments. This appears to have resulted in inaccurate assumptions being made about the judgments which, in reality, do not alter the legal basis for the making of care and placement orders.

 

The document discusses the two recent cases from October, where the Court of Appeal distanced themselves from a literal interpretation of “nothing else will do” – explaining in Ben Goldacre’s phrase “I think you’ll find its a little more complicated than that”

If the Myth-Busting document were confining itself to commentary that the deluge of appeals last summer were something of a blip and we have settled down from a strictly literal interpretation of Baroness Hale’s “nothing else will do” phrase to something rather more nuanced, then I’d be fine with it.  Or even “rumours of the death of adoption have been greatly exagerrated”

Though frankly, no matter how senior the senior QC, I’d prefer to hear the Court of Appeal say “just ignore BS, it changes nothing” than to take it from a document with no legal status or weight.

 

I don’t care for the implication that Re B and Re B-S weren’t a shift in emphasis and culture – that’s to completely ignore just about everything that Hale and Neuberger said about the nature of adoption in Re B, to ignore the ECHR in Y v UK when they said this :-

 

“family ties may only be severed in very exceptional circumstances and … everything must be done to preserve personal relations and, where appropriate, to ‘rebuild’ the family. It is not enough to show that a child could be placed in a more beneficial environment for his upbringing.”

 

or that the Court of Appeal meant nothing of substance whatsoever when they said this

 

“a process which acknowledges that long-term public care, and in particular adoption contrary to the will of a parent, is ‘the most draconian option’, yet does not engage with the very detail of that option which renders it ‘draconian’ cannot be a full or effective process of evaluation. Since the phrase was first coined some years ago, judges now routinely make reference to the ‘draconian’ nature of permanent separation of parent and child and they frequently do so in the context of reference to ‘proportionality’. Such descriptions are, of course, appropriate and correct, but there is a danger that these phrases may inadvertently become little more than formulaic judicial window-dressing if they are not backed up with a substantive consideration of what lies behind them and the impact of that on the individual child’s welfare in the particular case before the court. If there was any doubt about the importance of avoiding that danger, such doubt has been firmly swept away by the very clear emphasis in Re B on the duty of the court actively to evaluate proportionality in every case.”

If you think that has had no alteration on the legal basis for the making of Placement Orders, then I’m afraid we’ll have to disagree.  Does it change the tests in the Act? No, absolutely not. But as the Supreme Court made plain in Re B, proportionality is now a key ingredient in assessing such decisions.  And the interpretation of the word ‘requires’ in the Adoption and Children Act 2002  is now inextricably bound up with proportionality and article 8.  And the move away from linear judgments (whereby adoption ended up looking like the best option simply because all the others had been ruled out before the Court thought about adoption at all) from Re G is unquestionably an alteration to the legal basis for the making of Placement Orders.

If instead you mean – the combination of all that law should not mean that children who ought to have been adopted in 2012 shouldn’t be adopted now – the law is about making professionals and Judges work much harder on clarity of thought and reasoning, I wouldn’t entirely disagree  (I think that’s Baker J’s take, and I rate Baker J very highly).  I think there’s a very important debate to be had about whether Hale and the Court of Appeal wanted adoption to be harder to get for children, or harder to get for PROFESSIONALS.

But whether the “bar” has been raised or not, the legal basis has certainly changed – a judgment that would have passed muster in 2012 would not today.

 

And I completely agree with the document on Myth 4

MYTH 4 – because it is a “last resort” planning for adoption must wait
23. Local authorities should plan at the earliest possible stage for the possibility of adoption where it seems possible that other options – such as reunification with family, or care by family or friends – might not prove a realistic course of action

That does not mean pre-empting any decision. Nor does it remove the need to provide expert, high quality, evidence-based assessments of all realistic options to the court – which is essential in every case. But planning ahead is necessary to avoid delay and allows for a more timely process in achieving the right outcome for the child.
Absolutely right. I fully agree.  One out of five Myths successfully Busted. The others, rather less so.

 

 

I had a long long diatribe, but I’m going to confine myself just to Myth Five.

Let’s just take Myth number 5 in detail.

MYTH 5 – the 26 week rule applies to placement orders
24. Under the law as it came into force on 22 April 2014, any application for a care order or a supervision order must be completed within 26 weeks (unless the court is satisfied that delay is necessary, in which case a court may grant an extension). Placement order applications are not subject to the 26 week time limit. However, if the case is one in which the care plan is for adoption, if it is possible to complete the placement order application within the 26 week time limit, then that is likely to be in the best interests of the child, as we know that delay damages children.
If one takes each individual word, it seems true and accurate. But it doesn’t actually represent reality. The suggestion here is that Placement Order applications are free of the 26 week shackles, though it is good to get it done in that time if possible. The implication is that you can do Placement Orders in a timescale that is the child’s timescale, free of 26 week confinement.

That’s just not actually true in a meaningful way.
Yes, under the law as it came into force on 22nd April 2014 the 26 week timetable applies to care order applications, not placement order applications.

But the Act and the law are not the same things. They aren’t identical.

You can’t seek a Care Order with a plan of adoption unless you have got approval from the Agency Decision-Maker. And if you’ve got approval from the Agency Decision-Maker, you are in a position to lodge your placement order.

So if the Local Authority HAVE to hit a 26 week timetable (really 17 weeks for them, because they have to provide their evidence BEFORE the end of the case to let others respond to it) for their Care Order, then in any case where there’s a PLAN for adoption, then the same timetable applies.

 

Don’t take my word for it – let’s look at what the Court of Appeal said in a judgment that is utterly missing from the Myth-Busting document

Surrey County Council v S 2014

There was no reason why the local authority could not have obtained the agency decision maker’s decision in this case. They could then have commenced placement order proceedings to run concurrently with the care proceedings. That would have been fairer to the mother who has no automatic legal aid to oppose placement order proceedings. A concurrent hearing of care and placement order applications also helps to prevent the error of linear decision making because the court has all of the evidence about the welfare options before it. Indeed, I would go further: in order for the agency decision maker to make a lawful decision that the children be placed for adoption, the Adoption Agencies Regulations 2005 (as amended) must be complied with. For that purpose, the agency decision maker has a detailed ‘permanence report’ which describes the realistic placement options for the child including extended family and friends. The report describes the local authority’s assessment of those options. When a decision is then made by the agency decision maker it is based on a holistic non-linear evaluation of those options. That decision leads to evidence being filed in placement order proceedings. It is good practice for that evidence to include the permanence report used by the agency decision maker, the record or minute of the decision made and a report known as an ‘annex A’ report which is a statutory construct which summarises the options and gives information to the court on the suitability of the adoptive applicants. All of this permits the court to properly evaluate the adoption placement proposal by comparison with the other welfare options.

•In care proceedings where the local authority are proposing a care plan with a view to an adoptive placement, the court is likely to be missing important evidence and analysis if the placement order proceedings are considered separately. Furthermore, without the agency decision maker’s decision, any care plan based on an adoptive proposal cannot be carried into effect. It is likely to be inchoate or at least conditional on a decision not yet made and the outcome of which cannot be assumed. I make no criticism of the key social worker or the children’s guardian in this case. Their materials were of high quality but necessarily, without the agency decision maker’s decision, they could not present a full analysis of the factors in section1(4) of the 2002 Act and could do no more than pay lip service to the proposed adoption plan of the local authority and the interference with family life that it would have entailed.

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2014/601.html

[This case sticks out in my mind because it was Ryder LJ giving the lead judgment and I wholly agreed with it. That gave it a veneer of uniqueness that makes it easy to recall]

And of course, we are seeing right now with Re D that having a stand-alone Placement Order application (which is the practical import of Myth number 5 if we believe what Narey’s document is telling us) leads to the parents being unrepresented for the most draconian order that can be made. Article 6 anyone?

Myth 5 is not correct in any meaningful way – Care and Placement Orders are now inextricably bound up together and so, therefore are their timetables.

When the document says that it is a myth that 26 weeks apply to Placement Orders, that’s just not correct in any meaningful way in the real world. If you want to seek a Placement Order, you’re going to be doing it on a 26 week timetable, or persuading the Court to grant a s32(5) extension of that timetable in accordance with Re S.

 

Bustin’ makes me feel good.

 

 

I’ll quickly say that when the Myth-Busting document says of Re B-S  The judgment does not make it easier to obtain permission to oppose an application for an adoption order. The test remains the welfare of the child throughout his or her life.  

 

That simply holds no water when you look at the cases – pre B-S no successful leave to oppose, after B-S they are rare but happening.  An adoption order being discharged so that the argument could be re-heard, for example (Re W) On the ground, we’ve gone from leave applications being very unusual to every other adoption application having one.  And reports now of successful leave to oppose cases leading very close to a successful opposition (the High Court saying that it was only due to the exceptional circumstances and facts of the individual case that led to the father’s preference of a Special Guardianship Order not being the final outcome Re N (a child) 2014 http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2014/1491.html I have already indicated that this is an exceptional case. If it were not an exceptional case, I doubt whether an adoption order would have been appropriate )

 

The major plank of LA opposition to leave to oppose applications pre B-S – the impact on the carers of the application, which usually defeated such applications without more, is now rarely deployed, because Re B-S altered the principle dramatically in highlighting that the child’s welfare is not a short term thing, or even during childhood but is to be extended to consider his or her entire adult life.

 

So far as Busting is concerned, this is less Peter Venkman and more this dude  (a figment of the imagination)

 

There is no Narey, there is only Zuul

There is no Narey, there is only Zuul

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