Category Archives: case law

Liberace, losing and Lou Gehrig

Posted on September 20, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

Some thoughts arising from the Evidence in Child Abuse Cases  #ECAC course I attended today.

 

Firstly, it was an excellent course, and had a lot of fresh and useful material.  It was a genuine pleasure to hear Jo Delahunty QC  (who is like the most charming intelligent surgical scalpel you will ever meet) speak on the Al Alas Wray case  (which I’ve blogged about before – here : –   https://suesspiciousminds.com/2012/04/24/subdural-haematomas-fractures-and-rickets/                as she was leading counsel for one of the parents, and so had a wealth of useful insights and tactics to put forward.

 

Secondly, there was a paediatric neuroradiologist sitting in front of me who is DEFINITELY going to get instructed next time I need one. Likewise the paediatric neurosurgeon. And no, I’m not sharing names, because I want them to be available when I call them.

 

One slightly awkward moment when an entirely different barrister responded, during the Panel session, to a barbed question from a doctor about whether Court is the best place to resolve complex medical issues with the R-bomb  (With the greatest possible respect).  Kudos to the questioner, for not responding, as I might have with “you know what, I’ll see your ‘crusader for justice’ and raise you ‘I save children’s lives for a living’ , so keep your Respect to yourself”  and instead just said “with all due respect”  which was even better)

 

Anyway, Liberace.  You may not know, if you are younger, who Liberace is. So he was a flamboyant singer, who looked like this :-

 

 

In 1956, the Daily Mirror printed a story saying that he was gay.  It was the Fifties, perhaps people needed to be told the bleeding obvious back then, and perhaps for some reason it was any of a newspaper’s business what a celebrities sex life was like  (thank goodness times have changed)

 

Liberace sued them for libel. (he couldn’t, presumably, sue them for being homophobic jerks, because this was the Fifties).

 

He won his case,won about £15,000  (which in those days was at least several houses) and coined his expression “I cried all the way to the bank”.

Now, as you probably know, truth is a defence to libel. So, someone, representing the Mirror, went to Court, and tried to persuade the Court that it was true that Liberace was gay. And failed.

 

Feel free to look back at the photograph, which would have been my exhibit one.

 

I suspect whoever had that brief for the Mirror put on a tie with a smile on his face, and walked to Court with a spring in his step that day. They didn’t know much about basketball in those days, so the phrase “slam dunk” was meaningless to them, but if there was ever a slam dunk, that was it.

 

So I occasionally like to ponder the mixed feelings of the two counsel on that case – one with a mountain to climb who did so, and one with what looked like a molehill to step over, who fell over it.

 

The Al Alas Wray case is of course, not in that same league. For one thing (and I am sorry if this crushes any illusions) , Liberace really was gay, so shouldn’t have won; and the odds weren’t quite so slanted, but still, one is expected to think as counsel seeking the findings with the great and the good of Britain’s medicine lined up behind you, that you will see off these fancy American experts with their crazy theories, but it was not to be.

 

But the reason it was not to be, and this really came home today, listening to Jo Delahunty QC, is that people involved put in huge amounts of work. Medical reports weren’t just obtained and copied, or read through, they were digested and tough questions formulated arising out of them. The truth came out, but it wasn’t like finding a doorkey under a doormat – just a quick bit of lifting and there it is – this was truth obtained by painstaking forensic analysis.

 

And what was clear to everyone in the course was that Al Alas Wray might well represent the high watermark of when English family justice meant just that, that a person wrongly accused has the weight and resources of the law behind them and has the chance at a fair trial.  A similar case in two years time, is not going to get the experts that are needed, the time that each expert needs to read the source material, the ability to call and test that evidence  (it seems pretty clear that cross-examining experts will be a rarity even when you do get to instruct one) and certainly isn’t going to have the period of time it takes to do a case like that properly.

 

There was some interesting discussion about head injuries, and the medical research on lucidity.  A key piece of research, which offsets the previous position of Chadwick 1997 that “If a history purports a lucid interval that history is likely false and the injury is likely inflicted”   was Denton and Mileusnic 2003 where the child suffered a witnessed fall backwards 3 feet onto vinyl floor, was fine and tragically died 3 days later.

 

It’s a telling example of how even though any particular case might have to make medical history for the explanation given to be correct, medical history can be made by a single case.   (And the one of those that leapt to my mind was Lou Gehrig, the baseball player, who died of Lou Gehrig’s disease. Plus, it started with an L, so it fitted.  And was referenced by Bill-Hicks-rip-off-merchant Dennis Leary  with the tasteless aside  “How’d he not see that coming?”.    )

 

Frankly, Phineas Gage is a better example particularly as we’re talking head injuries, and his story is fascinating if you haven’t already read it.  He was a railway worker, who suffered a serious head injury, destroying his left frontal lobe  which changed his entire personality, and is pretty much the beginnings of neuroscience, and moved us from reading bumps on people’s heads to finding out which bits of the brain do what.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

 

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I’ve got (section) thirty seven problems, but a ***** ain’t one

Posted on August 31, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

 A discussion about section 37 of the Children Act 1989 and the pending appeal on  Re K (Children) [2012] EWCA Civ 1169

 

 

The case is discussed over at Family Lore, here

 

http://www.familylore.co.uk/2012/08/re-k-children-how-not-to-conduct.html

 

 

and Family Lore’s focus is on how the parents nearly messed up their very valid argument by the manner in which they presented the case.  That is a very good analysis and discussion, and I recommend checking it out.

 

I come at this from a slightly different tack, which is the novel and interesting point of law that Mr and Mrs B included in their grounds for appeal, namely that a series of ICOs were made, without an application for such being made by the Local Authority, the Court effectively making them of their own motion by using the powers under s37 and s38(1)(b) to make ICOs of the Court’s own motion.

 

 

The judgment granting permission to appeal can be found here

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2012/1169.html

 

 

The bare facts are these.  Mrs B is the mother of two children, who the Court named “Tok” and “Tun”   (which are the most unusual pseudonyms for children I have seen in a judgment).  Tok was 15, Tun 12 ½.    The father of the child is Dr K, mum and dad are estranged. Mum remarried, and Mr B is the stepfather.

 

There have been extensive private law proceedings over about six years and at the time in question, the children had been living with Mr and Mrs B.

 

On 10th December 2010, the Court made a section 37 direction, inviting the Local Authority to prepare a report on the circumstances of the case and specifically to report as to whether it would be appropriate to initiate care proceedings (and if not, to say why not). Alongside that, the Court made an Interim Care Order.

 

This is the only situation in which a Court can make an Interim Care Order without a formal application and arises from

 

Section 38 (1) of the Children Act 1989 

 

Where –

 

(a)   in any proceedings on an application for a Care Order or Supervision Order, the proceedings are adjourned; or

(b)   the Court gives a direction under section 37(1),

 

the Court may make an Interim Care Order or an Interim Supervision Order with respect to the child concerned.

 

The purpose of that power is to enable a Court faced with private law proceedings where it appears that the child is suffering or at risk of suffering significant harm if an ICO or ISO is not made, to make one, which would be for a period of 8 weeks, which coincidentally or by design, is the timescale for the Local Authority to supply their section 37 report.

 

Mr and Mrs B refused to work with the Local Authority, and as a result, five days after the making of the ICO, the children were removed from their care.

 

Now, remember, that in making the ICO, there was no formal application before the Court, and therefore the Local Authority had not laid out to the parents the threshold criteria  (or the facts that led to concerns about significant harm)  and nor had the Court held a hearing to determine whether the legal test for removal of the children under an ICO was made out.  (It being settled law now that sanctioning separation at interim stage is more than just deciding that an Interim Care Order is the right order)

 

By 28th January 2011, the LA had determined that matters had cooled and that the children could be returned to Mr and Mrs B, and did not make any formal application for a Care or Supervision Order.

 

The Judge considered otherwise, and made another section 37 direction for the LA to report, making alongside it a further Interim Care Order, pursuant to section 38 (1) (b).  He also said that alongside that ICO, he did not sanction the children being returned to Mr and Mrs B whilst it was in force.

 

Now, this will be the nub of the appeal decision for me. I am aware that there are two schools of thought on the powers of s38(1) (b).   One (my own) is that it goes far enough to allow a Court to make an ICO or ISO whilst awaiting the Local Authority’s report and decision as to whether to issue proceedings, “to hold the ring” as it were. The other  (and one that I have seen in various County Court case and a couple of High Court cases) is that faced with a Local Authority who don’t share the Judge’s view that a section 31 application for a Care Order should be made, the Court can simply make a second and subsequent directions for further reports and further ICOs until either matters resolve or the LA see sense and issue.

 

The LA, in this particular case, changed their view to reflect the Judge’s strong views, and subsequently made an application for an ICO. But the children remained out of their care for at least some period, on the basis of a second ICO having been made, without an application, using a second s38(1) (b) order, rather than the traditional s38(1) (a) ICO on application.

 

 

 

 

The precise wording of the Act, as set out earlier, says that the Court can make an ICO alongside a direction for a section 37 report, and does not say that this can only be once, or can only be done if the LA have not reported.

 

But the obvious risk here is that rather than the application for a Care Order being prosecuted by the Local Authority, opposed by the parents, and determined by the Court, the Court is actually driving the application that it is in the position of determining.

 

It seems to me that whilst the first ICO is justifiable  (although I think it would be worth remembering that s38(2) is clear that the order can’t be made unless there are reasonable grounds to believe the threshold criteria is made out, and the Court ought to, if making an order, give a judgment as to why that is the case and why in the circumstances of the welfare checklist making an ICO is better for the child than making no order)   making subsequent ones put the Court in a dual position of seeking an ICO whilst also being the arbiter of whether one should be made.

 

I also suspect that at the appeal hearing, the Court of Appeal may be troubled by the judicial indication that when making the second ICO (that was, remember, not sought by the Local Authority) the Judge informed the Local Authority that he did not sanction them returning the children to Mr and Mrs B during that order.  That seems to me, to be a step too far.  A Court might indicate that the risks before the Court were high and that the current circumstances suggested that managing the risks with the children with Mr and Mrs B would be very difficult to achieve, but the Court has fettered here the Local Authority power to do what their stated intention was, which was to rehabilitate the children to Mr and Mrs B.

 

 

This is the basis on which the Court of Appeal granted permission for the appeal to be heard in full, although the time for appealing the ICOs was clearly long gone  (as usual, my own underlining):-

 

  1. Without expressing any concluded view as to the ultimate merit or otherwise of these matters, the points that particularly justify a full hearing are as follows:

a) Given the importance of the decision made on 10th December 2010 to make an interim care order in private law proceedings, where the local authority had on at least two previous occasions, one less than a month prior to the hearing, indicated that there were no grounds for seeking a public law order, the judgment given on that day is extremely brief and amounts to little more than an assertion that there is “really no doubt at all” that the interim threshold criteria in s 38 are met on the basis of emotional abuse, principally arising from Mr B’s bullying and intimidating behaviour. The contrary stance of the local authority indicates ground for questioning if the s 38 threshold criteria were actually met.

b) The judge’s stated justification for making an interim care order in December 2010 was to gain Mr and Mrs B’s co-operation with the local authority assessment process. Once that had been achieved in January 2011 and in the light of the local authority’s sustained assertion that there were no grounds for a further interim care order, the judge’s decision to make two subsequent fresh s 37 directions, thereby maintaining the court’s jurisdiction to make interim care orders, must be open to question.

c) In his judgment of 12th April 2011, HHJ Tyzack give a detailed account of the history to date. It is of note that, at paragraph 9, the judge summarises the social work evidence as follows:

“…up until quite recently professionals from Leicestershire County Council have been able to work with Mr and Mrs B so far as the care of Tun is concerned. Indeed Ms S’s first two statements, which are comprehensive and thorough, attest to that fact, that, despite the difficulties that Leicester have had with Mr and Mrs B in achieving their co-operation, they have been able, up until recently, to work with them so far as Tun is concerned.”

The judge then goes on to record that “all that has fallen away” following the withdrawal of co-operation pursuant to the order of 4th March. Given the judge’s conclusion that the previous social work reports were favourable to Mr and Mrs B and were “comprehensive and thorough”, the court’s grounds for nevertheless making s 37 directions at earlier hearings, in part on the basis that the social work assessment was incomplete, falls to be questioned.

d) Insofar as the threshold criteria are concerned, the 12th April 2011 judgment, in like manner to that of December 2010, does not refer to the evidence prior to those dates which would establish a factual basis for holding that there are reasonable grounds for believing that Tun is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm. At paragraph 18 the judge simply says “I should say that I find the threshold criteria met, so far as this application is concerned, on a s 38 basis….”

 

 

In the permission hearing, the Court of Appeal didn’t make comment as to the other two issues I have touched on here – that the making of the first ICO allowed the children to be removed without the Court ever having determined that the risks involved were proportionate to the children being removed from home at an interlocutory stage, and whether when making the second ICO the Judge went further than he was entitled to by telling the Local Authority that the Court did not sanction the children being returned by the LA to Mr and Mrs B during the course of that order.

 

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Adult safeguarding investigation

Posted on August 30, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

 

A discussion of Davis & Anor v West Sussex County Council 2012

 

I’m always mindful that I do much less blogging on adult social care than I would like. Child protection work is my day to day bread and butter, so that’s invariably my focus, but I do like to discuss adult social care when I can, and I’ve neglected it recently.

 

So, given a combination of insomnia and this interesting case, the opportunity arises.

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2012/2152.html#para26

 

This was a judicial review brought by owners of an adult care home against the Local Authority’s decisions at a safeguarding case conference that 15 allegations made against staff were substantiated and 10 allegations made against staff were “inconclusive” and that the staff should be referred to the Independent Safeguarding Authority and the Nursing and Midwifery Council for possible disciplinary action. To cut to the chase, the claimants won the jr, and the decisions of that case conference were quashed.

 

So what went wrong, and how can that be avoided in the future?

The Claimants main objections to the process, all vigorously challenged by the Defendant, are that;

 

(a) They were not given adequate notice of the allegations made against them so as to allow them a fair opportunity to present their case at the Case Conference. They were only provided with a copy of the very substantial Investigation Report – which set out the allegations for the first time, albeit in unclear form – one working day before the Case Conference.(b) They were not shown the evidence against them.

(c) The Case Conference was not shown relevant evidence generated by the investigation, both for and against them.

(d) They were not permitted, or given an adequate opportunity, to produce relevant evidence to the Case Conference, whether through witnesses or otherwise.

 

and we can already see, by paragraph 3 of the judgment, that this is probably not going to end well for the Local Authority. If those objections are made out, the LA are going to lose, on the article 6 point if nothing else, but almost certainly it would be unreasonable to make determinations that affect the individual livelihoods and career of staff and the financial viability of the organisation as a whole without them having proper opportunity to defend themselves.  (I hasten to add that these claims were vigorously challenged by the Local Authority)

 

The case very helpfully sets out the statutory and binding guidance framework for conducting safeguarding investigations, and would be a useful starting point if one wanted to get to grips with what the duties and requirements are. (The joy of case law is that it often sets out all of the background knowledge in one neat place, saving you hours of leafing through separate sources or even locating what those sources might be)

 

What is interesting about this case is that of course there was a contract between the LA and the claimant for the provision of these services. The claimant ran their case largely on public law grounds  (i.e that this was an administrative decision of a public body which must be taken in a Wednesbury reasonable manner) and the LA largely on contractual grounds (i.e that the issue of investigations, cooperation with them, being bound by recommendations, dispute resolution etc were all contained in the contract, and this was a contract dispute  – and ultimately that the decision was about whether to renew the contract that existed between the Claimant and the LA)

This is interesting, at paragraph 26  (and was the part on @celticknottweet ‘s tweet that led me to dig a little deeper)

It is not the function of this court to decide whether or not abuse took place. The court is concerned with the process by which allegations were investigated. There is some disagreement about the long and complex dealings between the parties over a lengthy period and Mr McGuire QC for West Sussex places emphasis on what he describes as ‘the true factual context’.

 

So, it would not matter if the allegations had merit or substance, the JR court would not be looking at that – they would be looking at whether the process of investigation and opportunity to defend and decision-making process was fair, not whether or not the abuse alleged had taken place. The Court was not conducting a judicial determination of the allegations, merely the process.

 

On that very issue, here is the nub of the judgment  –  the case against the Claimants and their staff was produced in a 22 page report at 7pm on 8th December, for the conference on 10th December. The Claimants request for the conference to be adjourned to allow them time to consider the report and respond in writing was refused.  Two members of staff were refused admission to the conference (the Court accepted that there were legitimate reasons for this) but that decision made on the day, allowed there to be nobody present at the Conference who could speak to the day to day running of the home.  The meeting lasted for 8 hours, and there were “ten on one side and one on the other”  – the Claimant handed a solicitors letter to the Chair who declined to show it to anyone else.

    1. By the middle of 8 December nothing further had been heard from West Sussex about the conference set for 10 December and Mrs Hillary-Warnett sent a reminder to the Council which responded at 4pm confirming that the conference would proceed at 9.30 on 10 December and that a copy of the report would be hand delivered. This was received at 7pm on 8 December. It was 22 pages long alleging abuse against thirteen residents of Nyton House (five of whom had since died).

 

    1. The Claimants submit that the report is incoherent and unclear about what is being alleged against whom. The report referred to the investigations as having been ‘extensive and complex’ and it had taken seven and a half months to produce. However for much of that time the police had been the lead investigator and it had been difficult for West Sussex to carry out the necessary and important work. Of the thirteen residents identified in the report only one had been placed at Nyton House under the Contract. Every relative of a resident at Nyton House that had been questioned was positive about the quality of care provided.

 

    1. Mrs Davis’s evidence, unsurprisingly, is that she was quite unable to deal with the report in the very short time available. On 9 December the Claimants’ solicitors wrote to Mr Yong pointing out the difficulties of holding a Case Conference within the proposed timescale and proposing an adjournment for something over ten days so that Mrs Davis could consider the report and provide a written response within seven to ten days. The solicitors suggested as an alternative that ‘no expectation or pressure’ be put upon Mrs Davis at the next day’s Case Conference to respond and that she should be given the opportunity to provide a detailed written response within seven to ten days. The solicitor could not themselves have attended at such short notice.

 

    1. Mr Yong rejected both options by fax at about 6pm on 9 December.

 

    1. So Mrs Davis attended the Case Conference but took with her for support Mrs Hillary-Warnett, Ms Hillary who was the acting manager and, apparently, a Mr Fieldhouse the son of one of the residents. Mr Fieldhouse apparently soon left. Mrs Hillary-Warnett was refused admission on the basis that she was an alleged perpetrator, a decision understandable in the circumstances. Ms Hillary was also refused admission for similar reasons. So no one remained who was able to speak to day to day management issues at the home. Mrs Davis then attended the meeting alone. She was 77 years old and faced ten members of the safeguarding authorities, eight of whom were employees of West Sussex. Mrs Davis handed up her solicitors’ letter of 9 December but Ms Attwood, the chair declined to consider it or to show it to the others present.

 

    1. The meeting lasted more than 8 hours. It is unclear what documents were available to the panel. Mr McGuire emphasises the extent of the discussion at Mrs Hillary-Warnett’s interview with the police, at which all matters complained of were apparently covered. However there is nothing to suggest that the record of the interview was disclosed or discussed with the panel despite the fact that it must have been one of the factors leading the police to decide to take no action. It does not appear from the record that notes of other interviews were available to the panel either. West Sussex, surprisingly, relies on the fact that Mrs Davis did not herself at the conference ask to have the matter adjourned. But it was or should have been obvious that she wanted it adjourned because her solicitors had written to say so and Mrs Davis had reminded the meeting of the letter. Ms Attwood points to the fact that Mrs Davis started by making it clear that she was going to follow her solicitors’ advice to make no comment but then chose to go on and comment on a number of occasions. There was no indication that West Sussex saw anything amiss in relying on what this elderly lady went on to say, despite knowing of her solicitors’ advice. During the lunch break which according to Ms Attwood was ‘relaxed’ Mrs Davis made a remark to her informally. Ms Attwood “suggested … that she share these comments with other attendees when the meeting reconvened and she agreed and … repeated this statement towards the end of the meeting”. This was unfair.

 

    1. West Sussex was aware of Mrs Davis’s limited role as owner not manager of Nyton House. The chair refused an adjournment, gave Mrs Davis no proper opportunity to prepare for the meeting, refused even to consider her solicitors’ letter, continued for eight hours knowing that she was an elderly lady, where the meeting was ten on one side and one on the other and where even the informality of a brief lunch break was abused. Nevertheless conclusions were drawn about Mrs Davis’s credibility and her fitness to own a care home. These were in part based on detailed matters relating to individual carers and patients (see paragraph 18 of Ms Attwood’s statement) which West Sussex knew or should have known were outside Mrs Davis’s knowledge given the impossibility of looking into all these allegations in such an absurdly short time and its decision (for reasons which were of themselves legitimate ) to exclude from the meeting those who would have had the answers . West Sussex, as Mr McGuire put it, considered that Mrs Davis had ‘made a long series of admissions’.

 

    1. I again remind myself that the prime object of the investigation was to protect vulnerable adults and to prevent abuse not to give particular consideration to Mrs Davis. But her treatment at and around the meeting was deplorable.

 

    1. The Case Conference concluded that fourteen allegations of abuse were substantiated and ten were ‘inconclusive’. An allegation of ‘institutional abuse’ was found to substantiated based amongst other things on an ‘incestuous management and ownership structure’, an odd description of a family business. The conference imposed 45 ‘actions’ mainly on Nyton House. They also, referred, with potentially devastating professional and personal consequences, Ms Hillary, Ms Bidwell and Ms Hillary-Warnett to the ISA and NMC.

 

    1. The policy required minutes of the Case Conference and its outcomes to be sent to the Claimants within five days but these were not received within that time but delivered to the Claimants thirteen days later on 23 December with a request to respond within seven days (which would have been 31 December) shorter than the ten days permitted by the policy.

 

  1. It is not necessary for my decision for me to evaluate the quality of the decisions taken at the Case Conference but, having looked at the relevant material it seems to me that the submissions that there were serious flaws in the Defendants’ approach, for the reasons set out in paragraph 89 of Mr Purchase’s written argument, are well-founded. The object of the Case Conference was primarily to investigate allegations in the interests of protecting vulnerable adults, not to make determinations about Mrs Davis or the Case Conference and so it is understandable to a degree that West Sussex did not see the vulnerability of Mrs Davies as a concern.

 

and then this

 

52. West Sussex had started to investigate the allegations in April 2010 and, partly as a result of the police intervention, had not reached or communicated its conclusion orally until 10 December. It had not communicated its conclusions in writing until 22 December. It is hard to see how a responsible council genuinely seeking the views of the Claimants could have expected them to respond within a ludicrously short timescale set to expire on 31 December in the middle of what, for so many, is the Christmas and New Year break. In the event the council extended the deadline to 21 January 2011 and on 24 January the Claimants’ solicitors submitted a response running to 45 pages with a further eleven pages of attachments.

 

[This is the bit in the judgment, where if you’re for the Local Authority, you know beyond any doubt that you have lost on the public law case, your only hope is that the Judge agrees with your primary case that this is a contractual dispute, not a public law dispute. You are probably not optimistic about the prospects of that, at this point]

 

    1. Mr Purchase contends that the decisions of the Case Conference were made in the exercise of a public function. It was attended and conducted by members of public bodies carrying out their various statutory functions and to protect residents of care homes from abuse. Those functions are controlled by governmental guidance and published local policy and do not derive from contract. The point is starkly illustrated by the fact that only one of the residents who are alleged to have been abused was placed at Nyton House by the local authority under the Contract. He submits that while there is a contractual dispute following on from the allegations of abuse and the action taken by West Sussex following the decisions at the Case Conference there is no challenge to the Defendant’s exercise of its contractual rights in stark contrast with the facts in Caerphilly (a case in which Weaver was not cited and, which Mr Purchase argues, is wrong).

 

    1. I follow the guidance given by the Court of Appeal in Supportways and Weaver. In Supportways the question was whether a review which led to the decision not to renew a contract was a public law matter. As I read the judgments an applicant for a judicial review who has a contract with the body sued must establish a relevant and sufficient nexus between the matters complained of and the alleged unlawful exercise of public law powers. The caution about permitting a public law remedy does not apply to the same extent if the issue is not, as Neuburger LJ put it, ‘fundamentally contractual in nature’. The issues here are not fundamentally contractual or, to borrow the words of Elias LJ, ‘in the nature of a private act’.

 

    1. West Sussex responded to allegations by starting an investigation under its regulatory powers which was to lead to findings of abuse of thirteen residents at Nyton House only one of whom was there under a contract with West Sussex. The original complaint led swiftly to the exercise of the contractual power of suspension about which the Claimants’ solicitors corresponded. At different points in the investigation notices were given under the Contract. The Claimants’ solicitors’ letters referred to contractual rights, as well as to those under public law but there are also letters from West Sussex indicating that the two are seen as separate matters. When the decisions now challenged were taken at the Case Conference in December 2010 Default Notices under the Contract were soon given and one of the West Sussex employees present at the conference Mr Ian McCarthney attended because his responsibilities were for management of contractual matters. But it is plain that the investigation would have been carried out whether or not a contract had been in place between the parties as would the process of conference and decision-although the actions to be taken as a result would have differed. West Sussex issued Default Notices under the contract following the case conference but this was one of a series of steps consequent upon the decisions. It seems to me that West Sussex was rightly and primarily concerned with investigating allegations of abuse under its legal powers.

 

    1. The contractual issues were ancillary. There is no direct challenge to the contract in this case. The Claimants originally sought to quash the Default Notice, a grievance for which a private law remedy was available. Their other complaints are some distance from the contract. The contractual remedies would have been inadequate because these are essentially public law claims. The decisions were not about whether or not to continue a contract or to change its terms, they were about whether or not abuse had been established and if so what the consequences would be in a number of areas, only one of which was the contract. The Claimants are trying to clear their names from what they see as unfair findings of abuse by West Sussex (but not by the other public agencies concerned) and protect their staff from what they see as unfair referrals to professional bodies. In essence these are public law not contractual concerns.

 

  1. When taken together the factors cumulatively establish sufficient public flavour, as it was put in Weaver, to make the process of investigation and decision a public function distinct from the contractual relationship. So this defence fails.

 

These investigations are hard for a Local Authority. They have a duty of care to the people placed in these homes, and once the police conclude their investigation, there is obviously a time pressure to take appropriate safeguarding action. But in a case such as this, where the police were investigating from April to December, having a meeting with only one working day for the organisation under investigation to respond to the report was always going to be problematic.  I suspect in retrospect  (a place where wisdom comes easily) there is regret in not having accepted the request to adjourn for 10 days.

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On wednesdays he goes shopping, and has buttered scones for tea

Posted on August 28, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

A short post about C (A Child) [2012] EWCA Civ 1144 , the child who nearly but not quite went to Canada.  (yes, the title is immensely remotely linked to the story, sorry) . Title two (which will make sense in a minute), was Dylan’s “You don’t need a weather vane to know which way the child goes”

Changes of heart seem to be becoming a bit of a theme in recent weeks, with this case and the Re LB, where the Judge changed her mind after delivering a finding of fact judgment.

 https://suesspiciousminds.com/2012/07/19/it-was-professor-plum-in-the-kitchen-with-a-candlestick-no-it-was-professor-plum-and-miss-scarlett/

This one is a private law case, and with an international (if not actually any lumberjacking) element.

http://www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed99950

A fairly easy one at first instance. Child is nearly 15, dad wants her to be returned to Canada, child wants to go, mum acquiesces, and a consent order is made. The child then decides, actually, no I don’t want to go to Canada. You can’t, as we all know, appeal a consent order, so this creates a bit of a problem. [Though see http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2012/55.html for the door being opened to appeal consent orders made on fallacious grounds]

There was also, of course, the problem that there was the distinct possibility of litigation within the Canadian jurisdiction.

But it is clear that having consented on the basis that the child wanted to go, when she decided she didn’t, it caused a problem. I like this line from the judgment, and will be stealing it  “The entire foundation of the order evaporated”

The Judge at first instance was worried, when the case came back before him, considering that he lacked jurisdiction to make an order which in terms would reverse the order already made.  As was submitted, the child’s wishes and feelings were no longer cut and dried, and although there was an argument that conducting further investigation into her wishes and feelings and the right course of action might itself compound the emotional turmoil she was in, it might not be as simple as saying that she had decided not to go.

“What are Nicole’s real wishes and feelings?  Might she not shift again?  Is she perhaps something of a weather vane in relation to her future country of choice? “

The Court of Appeal effectively decided that if father was committed to pursuing his application to have the child returned to Canada, the Court could not bar that application being heard, but judicial shoulders were leaning hard on him and the mother to engage in some mediation and thrash out the issues themselves.

The Court of Appeal do seem to be adopting this course in recent months of trying to make parents take some responsibility for the impact of litigation on their children. One might cynically suggest that the Court is passing the buck in asking parents who are in litigation to sort things out themselves, but it appears to be a phenomenon which is catching on.

MacFarlane LJ – “I would particularly endorse what my Lord has said about the need for the two parents to share the decision about Nicole rather than expect a rather blunt legal process to be deployed and come up with an answer which they as parents have responsibility for taking.  The father, in particular, would be wise to step back and look at the situation that now confronts the family with the potential for contested proceedings.  Accepting, as I do for the present, Mr Turner QC’s characterisation of Nicole as being a young girl in her mid-teens who changes her mind from time to time and accepting that that might well be the case, I suspect that now that she has made her position plain as it currently is, it is not the moment for it to be met by the robust deployment of an application pursued in legal proceedings. There is surely a need for the father to consider whether that course will do more damage than good to his relationship with Nicole.  A better course may be for the parents to agree arrangements and allow Nicole, as she develops in maturity, to make up her own mind as to where she goes and if that is to Canada no doubt the father will be very pleased to renew his relationship with her there on that voluntary basis.”

On a more self-centred topic, I’m about to hit 2,000 reads for the month of August, which is very pleasing for me, and smacks my previous best month. Thank you to all of you for reading. If you do read this blog, and find it anything other than impenetrable legal waffle, I’d be enormously grateful if you could inflict it on a couple of other people you know.

Just like the underpant-stealing gnomes from South Park, I have a three stage plan.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_%28South_Park%29

Stage 1 – write blog

Stage 2 ????

Stage 3 profit

 

[Edit  – I’ve realised that if you don’t know that three stage internet meme, you might well think I literally meant that there’s a business plan for the blog and an aspiration to profit, whereas the metaphor was intended to mean the exact opposite  – there never is a stage 2 in the gnomes plan, and nor is there in mine. I write this blog because I like writing it. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it makes me happy to know that people are reading it]

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I wish I was Special, you’re so very Special (Guardians)

Posted on August 24, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

 

 Some musings on Special Guardianship, and particularly what the ‘character’ of such placements are when it comes to working out level of contact

 

 

I did an SGO hearing this week, and two things struck me on it. 

 

The first, is quite simple, but struck me for really the first time. We did the hearing, which involved broad agreement and ample praise about the placement itself and the making of an SGO, but then quite a bit of to-and-fro and drawing up preambles about contact. We then had a very short hearing, the orders made as drafted, and as I left, and thanked the Special Guardians, they remarked “is that it? What happens now?” and I told them about the order, and keeping it safe and whatnot.

 

But it really did strike me, that we are making an order for a child to live permanently with a family member, and there’s nothing like the ‘celebration’ hearing that there is for an adoption hearing, when the system has a hearing that isn’t about detail, or wrangling, or dispute, and is just a simple hearing which the child and the carers attend to just formally recognise that this is important and should be a sense of occasion. Should SGOs end, as they do now, with a whimper, rather than a bang?

 

 

The second, is more complex, and potentially more interesting (if you are a geek), and I would thank counsel for the mother for raising it.  [I won’t name her, but it was a fascinating issue – well, to me at least]

 

The question, in simple terms, is this :-

 

When determining the level of ongoing contact, do SGO placements have a particular character, or is the contact just determined on a case by case basis?

 

 

To illustrate – here are three possible outcomes for children who are subject to care proceedings if they don’t go home, and three possible levels of contact.  From the relatively narrow cross-section I have done, I can readily match them up, but is that just a result of a narrow cross-section, or local practice, or is it reflective of the placements having a particular character which produces a particular contact regime

 

Adoption with a stranger

SGO with a relative / foster carer

Long-term fostering with a foster carer

 

 and three possible contact quantums

 

Six times per year

Two or three times per year

No direct contact or once per year

 

 

Maybe you haven’t matched them the same way I did, based on my narrow experience; but it does seem to me that there’s something of a spectrum of character (and frequency of contact) which starts with Adoption (and low contact at one end) and Long-term fostering (and six or so sessions of contact at the other).

SGOs come somewhere on that spectrum, but are they (as I was arguing), closer to Adoption, being a form of permanence, or as the parents were legitimately arguing, closer to long-term fostering?

 

On the one hand, one can see the parents perspective that it feels peculiar to have a higher level of contact if your child is placed with a stranger than if the child were placed with a member of your family; on the other that managing contact where the child is in the care of the State is different than when the child is permanently cared for by an individual who has legal responsibility for them. 

 

 

So, does an SGO placement have a particular form of character, which makes it Permanence, and this has an impact on the right sort of contact for that child?

 

Or, is the character of the type of placement completely irrelevant in SGOs and the right level of contact falls completely on an analysis of the particular case?

The original White Paper is interesting here – look at this bit (my underlining):-

 

“5.10 The Government will legislate to create this new option,

which could be called “special guardianship”. It will only be

used to provide permanence for those children for whom

adoption is not appropriate, and where the court decides it is in

the best interests of the child or young person. It will:−

give the carer clear responsibility for all aspects of caring for

the child or young person, and for making the decisions to

do with their upbringing. The child or young person will no

longer be looked after by the Council; provide a firm foundation on

which to build a life−long permanent relationship between the

carer and the child or young person; preserve the legal link

between the child or young person

and their birth family; be accompanied by a proper access to a full

range of support services including, where appropriate, financial

support.”

 

 

Now, I’m not at all sure that SGOs are ‘only used to provide permanence for those children for whom adoption is not appropriate’  but that does suggest that “Permanence” was in the mind of those who constructed the Act and concept.

What we do know, in terms of character, is that SGOs are not just a family member version of Adoption. The Court of Appeal made that plain in RE AJ (A CHILD) (2007) [2007] EWCA Civ 55  and also RE S (A CHILD) (2007) [2007] EWCA Civ 54

 

Special guardianship orders did not effectively replace adoption orders in cases where children were to be placed permanently within their wider families. No doubt there were many cases in which a special guardianship order would be the appropriate order, but each case had to be decided on what was in the best interests of the particular child on the particular facts of the case

And in terms of contact, certainly the Court treat the views of adopters and SGOs differently.

 

Compare RE L  (A CHILD) (2007) [2007] EWCA Civ 196 which dealt with Special Guardians who were appealing a contact order being made that they had opposed and the Court of Appeal upheld the original contact order

 

With  RE R (A CHILD) (2005) [2005] EWCA Civ 1128  where the Court of Appeal held that making contact orders in the teeth of opposition from adopters was highly unusual, and effectively wouldn’t be done unless the Court considered the adopters were objectively and subjectively unreasonable.

 

In Re L – the contact order and various conditions, had been at the behest of the Local Authority,  and the grandparents were deeply unhappy about it. They sought to argue that, in terms, if the Court were making an SGO they ought really to let the Special Guardians get on with it, and not fetter their exercise of parental responsibility.

 

This is what the Court of Appeal said about that  (underlining mine)

 

33. There is in my mind no doubt that GP are correct in their understanding that the SGO confers parental responsibility upon them to a greater extent than they enjoyed under the residence order. It is apparent to me that the special guardian can trump the exercise of parental responsibility by a parent. The Local Authority have no parental authority and never have had in this case. Often a SGO will replace an existing care order and then by virtue of s. 91(5A) of the Children Act 1989 the SGO discharges the care order. All of this sits comfortably with the philosophy which lies behind the introduction of this new form of order. It is intended to promote and secure stability for the child cemented into this new family relationship. Links with the natural family are not severed as in adoption but the purpose undoubtedly is to give freedom to the special guardians to exercise parental responsibility in the best interests of the child. That, however, does not mean that the special guardians are free from the exercise of judicial oversight.

 

34. S. 14B(1) requires the court when making the SGO to consider whether a contact order should also be made. The obvious beneficiaries of that contact order are the natural parents who have been sidelined but not totally displaced by the making of this order. If a contact order is made then it can be hedged about with conditions see s. 11(7) and s 14E(5) of the Act. S. 14B(2) also permits the court to give leave (and by implication, therefore, to refuse to give leave) for the child to be known by a new surname. It follows as night follows day that the court has the jurisdiction to make the orders set out in paragraphs 2, 3, 4 and 5 of the judge’s order and GP’s attack has, therefore, to be one directed at the manner in which the judge exercised the discretion she so clearly had.

 

 

What the Court effectively decided here was that the views of the SGO about contact were not binding or final, and where it was appropriate to make a contact order in the teeth of opposition from the SGOs (or prospective SGOs), the Court could do so.

 

Wilson L.J did express a measure of disquiet about contact being imposed in the face of such opposition, before concluding that it had been a matter for the trial judge, not the appellate Court :-

 

67. I have however felt some, if transient, hesitation about the proper approach to the only other substantial part of the grandparents’ appeal, namely their objection to the order for supervised contact, outside the home and in their absence, between E and the mother. For example I have asked myself whether the judge sufficiently factored into her reasoning either the profundity of the grandparents’ opposition to such contact; or their sense of outrage in the event that their conviction as to where E’s interests lie were to be overruled; or their apparent state of emotional exhaustion; or the importance for E that the pressures upon them should not become insupportable.

Would I (so I have wondered) have made an order, in the teeth of opposition of that character, that, in accordance with the detailed provisions of the “Package of FamilySupport” annexed to the order, a child then less than four years old should, on 5November 2006, i.e. only two months after the date of the order, be collected by a”contact supervisor”, whom the child will be likely to have met only twice, and takenaway for four hours to meet the mother for the first of the six occasions of contact?

68. But, almost as quickly as they have crept into my mind, I have had to remind myself that such questions are not aptly posed to himself by an appellate judge. The essence of our system for such determinations of issues as depend upon the exercise of a discretion is that it is for the trial judge to conduct the exercise by evaluation of the rival arguments following full exposure to the evidence by sight and sound. The role of the appellate court is limited to an enquiry into whether the judge’s reasoning betrays error in the manner of her or his conduct of the exercise or whether the determination must be the product of such error in that it is plainly wrong.

 

 

What is left unsaid, is how much weight, if any, ought to be given to the views of the prospective carer.

 

The views of the prospective SGOs (and equally, the views of the parents) don’t expressly come within the Welfare Checklist that the Court must consider, but it would be hard to imagine that a Judge would not take into account, say, that the SGO was willing to countenance contact three times per year and the parent wanted twelve. Both of those views must form some part of the decision-making process.

 

It is interesting*, of course, that in Re L, the Court of Appeal decided that the legal powers to make a contact order alongside SGO existed, ergo it was a judicial discretion to make them in the teeth of opposition, whereas in Re R, the Court of Appeal acknowledged that the legal tools were there to make a contact order alongside adoption but imported a rule of thumb that to do so in the face of genuine opposition from the adopters would be highly unusual  (not quite a rebuttable presumption against contact orders in adoption cases, but not a great distance from that)

 

[*to me, not necessarily universally]

 

So, it is plain that there is some distance on the spectrum between Adoption and SGO, and in the way the Court will treat such placements when considering contact.  But how much distance remains uncertain.

 

[I know that there are some Family Placement folk who read this blog, and I would really welcome some views on it.  I’m mindful that SGOs have been legal for about eight years now – I think the Adoption and Children Act 2002 that introduced them got phased in, in 2004; and that probably the majority of children who have been made subject to SGOs remain so, being still children. I wonder how much, if any, research has been done to examine children’s experiences of SGOs, and where that research might take us.  Is there some part of the contact process which differs in a case of Permanence  (where the child’s needs are being met, legally and on the ground, by individuals, rather than by the State?) ]

 

 

 

 

Post-script

 

I was wrong, in a discussion with my wonderful significant other this week, about how hard it is for a parent to over-turn an SGO once made. I said it was relatively easy, and she thought it would be very hard.

 

I’d thought that the application would just be a straightforward section 10(9) leave application  (i.e that if you had a good enough case to argue about the Court discharging the SGO, you’d be able to argue it) but I see now from  RE G (A CHILD) (2010) [2010] EWCA Civ 300  that the Court of Appeal have ruled that it is appropriate to use the Warwickshire  test   from WARWICKSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL (Appellant) v M (Respondent) & (1) M (2) L (BY THEIR CHILDREN’S GUARDIAN) (Interveners) (2007) [2007] EWCA Civ 1084  that test being  (I’m paraphrasing, but not by much)  “the law says you have to have a mechanism that lets you challenge this order at a later point and there’s a hurdle to get over, but the Courts are blowed if they are going to set you a hurdle that any actual human being could ever get over, in order to use that mechanism”

 

Using the Warwickshire test makes it very hard, without question.  

So, my wonderful significant other was right, and I was wrong. Not for the first, nor I fear the last time.

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You never know when it might just… Buckaroo!

Posted on August 20, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

 

A discussion of whether too much weight is being put on the back of North Yorkshire County Council v B 2007, and whether there is such a thing as a ‘ruling out’ hearing at interlocutory stage

 

 

 

This is a scenario that’s not that uncommon in care proceedings – all of the evidence on the parents has been collected and the professionals have taken a view on it, that view not necessarily being shared by the parents. But the case isn’t ready for final hearing and is being adjourned for 3-4 months, usually in order to test a placement with a relative.

 

[Incidentally, could we all stop using the phrase ‘a relative has come out the woodwork’ in such situations? It’s icky, and perjorative. And is a pet hate of mine. They are grandparents, or aunts, or friends, not woodlice]

 

Can the Court in those circumstances have a hearing which disposes of the parents case at interlocutory stage?

 

There’s a school of thought that you can, arising from the High Court decision in North Yorkshire County Council v B 2007   [2008 1 FLR 1645]

That case certainly provides some authority for the suggestion that the Court can deal with the parents case before the case is ready for final hearing. And let’s be fair, the cases I do are all in Courts which are bound by High Court authorities.

 

But, to borrow medical sceptic Ben Goldacre’s phrase  “I think you’ll find it’s a little bit more complicated than that”

 

What follows, like everything on my blog is my personal opinion, and not representative of anything more. But perhaps even more so than usual, because I’m never going to be in a position where my personal opinion on say Re X  (it’s a very high threshold to cross to get an EPO these days) is in conflict with the law, since that’s exactly what Re X says.

 

But my interpretation of how far you can push North Yorkshire is not decided law, and thus I might one day have to present a case where my personal views on it are set aside. Hence the lawerly caveats. Sorry.

Let’s look at the facts of North Yorkshire. 

The case was listed for an eleven day final hearing, and just before the hearing, it became apparent that the final assessment on the family carers who had slithered under the doorframe  [see how icky it is when you take the usual metaphor and slightly reword it? Stop saying ‘come out of the woodwork]  would not be ready.

 

The Judge was faced with the prospect of abandoning a hearing where eleven days had been set aside, witnesses warned etc and finding all of that time again in the future, or trying to see if something useful could be done with that hearing time. The Local Authority suggested that the Court could use the eleven days to hear mother’s case (that the children should be returned) and then have a shorter disposal hearing on appropriate order and contact at a later stage.

 

North Yorkshire sets out the Honourable Mrs Justice Black’s(as she then was) decision on the preliminary issue of whether a Court could actually conduct a hearing determining a parents case before the final hearing.

 

We do not know, as the full case was not reported, what the decision at the end of the eleven days was, but the preliminary issue was decided, and Black J concluded that it was open to the Court to conduct such a hearing.

 

 

Now, here are some important things from that judgment :-

 

  1. Mother was making a positive case (not just disputing the LA case)
  2. Mother was asserting that she was making progress and could evidence that. She was on a methadone reduction programme. She accepted she was not in an immediate position to have the child returned, but felt that was achievable in the foreseeable future
  3. The family members, who were being put forward, were not certain to have a positive full assessment – the prospects were there, but the initial viability had been negative and the placement revisited because the father received a custodial sentence removing his risk from the scene.
  4. The judgment is only permissive  – it says that the Court, could embark upon a hearing to determine the merits of mother’s case. It does not say that a Court HAS to do this in similar circumstances, nor does it set out any criteria for when it would be appropriate to do so, or when it would be wrong.

 

 

But this is the paragraph that causes me disquiet if this authority is being used as authority for a principle that parents can be ‘Ruled Out’ at interlocutory stage.

 

17. It cannot be argued, in my judgment, that decisions in care proceedings only crystallise when the Court is about to make a final order. I am not saying that decisions are not open to a later attempt to persuade the subsequent judge to change earlier conclusions and findings in the right circumstances. In the right circumstances they can be open to later challenge, and res judicata or issue estoppel, in its traditional form has a limited place in family proceedings.

 

 

It is the underlined passage that causes me to believe, on a personal level, that using North Yorkshire as authority for a principle that the Court can finally dispose of a parents case at interlocutory stage simply puts more weight on its back than the case can bear.  Buckaroo!   (also Yeeee-haaa)

 

If one thinks for a moment about what one would mean by “Ruling Out”, it must surely include this :-

 

  1. That the children, if they are old enough to understand, can be told that the Court has decided that they will not go home to mummy or daddy.

 

  1. And inevitably, if they are to be told that, that mummy and daddy can’t come back to the final hearing in 3 months time and argue for the return of the children.

 

  1. And to an extent, that they are PREVENTED from doing so, as a result of the earlier decision and judgment of the Court.

 

 

[and by extension, that if the parent issued a Residence Order application shortly before the final hearing  – for which, of course, they don’t need leave as a result of s10(4), the Court would dismiss this without hearing any submissions or evidence. And I suggest that as soon as you put it in those terms, you can see that there’s no possibility of a Court doing that, no matter what judgments have gone beforehand]

 

If you don’t have those 3 things, then you have not had a Ruling Out of the parents.  What you may have had, which is legitimate, is a judicial determination of the case against the parents and the counter case, at a particular snapshot in time and a judgment as to whether, all things being equal the parents are likely to be able to overcome any deficiencies found in that judgment within the children’s timescales. 

 

But saying that the parents can produce no evidence at the later final hearing to counter that judgment – if they make sweeping changes or accelerated progress the Court will not hear them on the issue, is not only NOT expressly sanctioned by North Yorkshire, the case says quite the reverse. [IMHO]

 

I am also troubled by the concept of Ruling Out, and how it fits with the House of Lords decision in Kent County Council v G 2006

 

Thus the court’s role is plain. It is not, as Jonathan Cohen QC put it in his eloquent submissions on behalf of Ellie and her parents, to decide whether or not a child is to live with her family. It is, as Charles Howard QC put it on behalf of the local authority, to decide whether or not to make a care order.   (paragraph 48)

 

If it is not the Court’s role to decide whether the child should return to parents, but rather, whether to grant the application made by the State  (and that must be right, because that’s where the burden of proof lies) then the Court cannot finally determine that application until final hearing/agreed final IRH.

 

 

Of course, where there is a dispute over threshold, or an interim care plan (the parent opposing the move, or level of contact) or dispute as to the expert evidence, or what the timescales for change would be, then there is some value in incorporating within that, the North Yorkshire position,  of the Court weighing up the merits of returning the child to the parent at that particular time and perhaps indicating what sort of changes would be required for the door to be opened for parents at the final hearing.   I think any and all of that is legitimate and permissable, so long as the Court is not tempted to take that additional step of ruling that the parents case is finally disposed of.

 

But a stand-alone Ruling Out hearing, is a concept that worries me. If one looks at an analogous situation of whether a separate finding of fact hearing is required,

 

RE A County Council v DP, RS, BS by the children’s guardian [2005] where MacFarlane LJ said:

“The authorities make it plain that, amongst other factors, the following are likely to be relevant and need to be borne in mind before deciding whether or not to conduct a particular fact finding exercise:

a) The interests of the child (which are relevant but not paramount)
b) The time that the investigation will take;
c) The likely cost to public funds;
d) The evidential result;
e) The necessity or otherwise of the investigation;
f) The relevance of the potential result of the investigation to the future care plans for the child;
g) The impact of any fact finding process upon the other parties;
h) The prospects of a fair trial on the issue;
i) The justice of the case.”

 

 

I am not sure that the merits of what can be achieved at what I would call a North Yorkshire hearing rather than the shorthand (which I suggest is misleading) of a Ruling Out hearing, can justify it as a stand-alone hearing where no other important issues are being resolved.

 

Rant over.

 

Now, your worships, I invite you to list this matter for a “ruling out” hearing, in line with the High Court authority of North Yorkshire…

Comments Off on You never know when it might just… Buckaroo!

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we, the people, in order to form a more perfect union

Posted on August 16, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

 

This is a very trivial one even by my own standards of nonsense, because the only case I’m interested in this week (RE B&H fact-finding) hasn’t come up as a judgment yet.

As ever, I ended my most recent court hearing drawing up a court order, and like a reverse iceberg, only about a tenth of the document was an order, and the rest was preamble.

And that let me to muse as to whether the word means exactly what it suggests, that this is what happens before the amble.  And it sort of does – it literally means before the walk.  From perambulation, meaning walking.

That ended up leading me to consideration of preambles generally, and that the most famous/notable one is the lead in to the American constitution.  I was hoping that it would begin “We hold these truths to be self-evident” since that is a better title, but no, it goes like this:-

 

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
 
My preambles are, sadly, never as lofty as that; though it is something to aspire to.
 
Apparently, no American Court has ever used the preamble as the basis for any decision, which is a shame.
 
And in an oddly circuitous event, one of the only two Children Act cases on Lawtel that deal with ‘preambles’  is the President’s decision on prior authority and public funding that I’ve previously blogged about, and the other one is my own case involving maternity testing and drawing inferences * where a child did not wish  to undertake one which is undergoing a fractious final  hearing this very week.
 
In that case, the Court of Appeal were very unhappy about the preamble to the order leaving the matter (a) unresolved and (b) proceeding on a fallacious basis.
 
So, although nobody in America has ever managed to get a case decided as a result of the preamble to the US constitution, I’ve managed to win an appeal where the preamble played a major part in that decision.
 
America 0  Suesspicious Minds 1
 
 
[I actually had completely forgotten that synchronicity and was merely putting together something short on the charming concept that all of that preliminary drafting is something we do before the amble.]
 
 
* There are now two cases involving children not wanting to undertake DNA tests, and both produce different answers based on the very different facts. Both are in the tags.

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“When they begin, to intervene…”

Posted on August 7, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

Sorry, the titles just get worse.  (but I bet you’re humming it already)

 Two important cases on Interveners in fact-finding hearings, or  “Re T for two”

 

The first is the Supreme Court decision in Re T.

 

http://www.supremecourt.gov.uk/docs/UKSC_2010_0244_Judgment.pdf

 

 

This relates to an appeal from the Court of Appeal, which in turn considered an appeal from a County Court.  It related to the order at the conclusion of a finding of fact hearing (which took 5 ½ weeks) that one of the Interveners, who was not publicly funded and who was not found to have perpetrated the injury, should have his costs paid by the Local Authority, who had brought the care proceedings.

 

This was a very important case for both Local Authorities and those who represent Interveners, particularly those who would not financially qualify for legal aid.

 

The costs that the Intervener had to pay was £52,000 so one can see why the  Court of Appeal were looking around for someone to foot that bill, since the Intervener was found to be blameless.

 

The children had made allegations of a sexual nature against the father and six other men, all of whom intervened. Five received public funding, the sixth did not.

 

All of the interveners were exonerated at the finding of fact hearing.

 

4. It was and is common ground that the Council could not be criticised for advancing in the care proceedings the allegations made against the grandparents. The judge, His Honour Judge Dowse, summarised the basis of their application for costs as based “on the apparently inequitable fact that they have largely succeeded in defending the allegations made against them but must bear their own costs”.

The judge dismissed their application. He did so on the basis that it was not usual to order costs in a child case against a party unless that party’s conduct has been reprehensible or its stance unreasonable. In support of that proposition the judge cited authorities that included the judgments of Wilson J inSutton London Borough Council v Davis (No 2) [1994] 1 WLR 1317 and Wilson LJ in In re J (Costs of Fact-Finding Hearing) [2009] EWCA Civ 1350; [2010] 1 FLR 1893.

The judge expressed the view that it was unacceptable that more and more people in the position of the grandparents were faced with “potentially life-changing allegations” without being able to gain some financial assistance from the State.

 

 

I don’t disagree with that at all, and I think the judge at first instance got this entirely right. It is deeply unfortunate that someone faced with allegations as grave as this, particularly where they are disproved has to pay their own costs, but that misfortune can’t extend to making the Local Authority pay unless their conduct in bringing the case is reprehensible or unreasonable.  Otherwise one runs the risk of very serious cases not being put before the Court as a result of fear of costs orders being made if the allegations are not established.

 

[Frankly, I think non means, non merits legal aid ought to be available to any party who is able to satisfy the Court that they should be involved within the proceedings, whether as an Intervener or a party given leave to make an application; but that was obviously beyond the scope of the Courts]

 

This is interesting, from paragraph 6  (and these were some heavy-hitters in the world of counsel)

 

It is a remarkable fact, and ironic in an appeal about costs, that all counsel are appearing pro bono. We would like to express our gratitude for the assistance that they have given.

 

CAFCASS in the case submitted that the Court of Appeal decision was the first one where a Local Authority were ordered to pay costs where there was no criticism of its conduct of the litigation  (effectively adopting a civil – “loser pays” philosophy)  and that, of course, is why the case was important enough to make it to the Supreme Court.

 

Particularly, this passage at para 18 of Wilson LJ’s judgment in the Court of Appeal on this case  (the ‘general proposition’ being that costs orders shouldn’t be made in family proceedings in the absence of unreasonable conduct)

 

            “I consider that, where in care proceedings a local authority raise, however appropriately, very serious factual allegations against a parent or other party and at the end of a fact-finding hearing the judge concludes that they have not established them, the general proposition is not in play.”

 

 

The Supreme Court sum up the issues admirably here:-

 

39. The question of whether it is just to make an award of costs against a public authority must be distinguished from the question of whether a litigant’s costs should be publicly funded. The former question is for the court; the latter for the legislature. Whether a litigant’s costs should be publicly funded involves issues in relation to access to justice and the requirements of article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights. Mr Hale invoked that article in support of his argument that where allegations made against an intervener are not made out, the local authority which advanced those allegations should be liable for the intervener’s costs. We consider that this argument was misconceived. The requirements to provide public funding in the interests of access to justice and of compliance with article 6 apply at the outset of legal proceedings, not when they are concluded, in the light of the result.

 

40. The Funding Code prepared by the Legal Services Commission pursuant to section 8 of the Access to Justice Act 1999 makes provision for public funding in proceedings under, inter alia, section 31 of the Children Act 1989. The effect of the code is that children, parents and those with parental responsibility are granted funding without reference to means, prospects of success or reasonableness, but such funding is not available to interveners who are joined in such proceedings: see volume 3C-427 of the Legal Services Commission Manual. There may be a case for saying that this results in injustice in the case of interveners in the position of the grandparents in the present case, but it does not follow that justice demands that any deficiency in the provision of legal aid funding should be made up out of the funds of the local authority responsible for the care proceedings.

 

 

And I would suggest that the Supreme Court here were expressing a deal of sympathy for the suggestion that the LSC ought to be stumping up for interveners, but are obviously bound by the funding code  [in the absence of a judicial review challenge to the construction of that funding code or its exercise in a particular case]

 

 

And they conclude the case here:-

 

41. If in principle a local authority should be liable for the costs of interveners against whom allegations have been reasonably made that are held unfounded, then this liability should arise whether or not the interveners are publicly funded.

In the present case, the five men who intervened and were exonerated should also have sought and been awarded costs. The burden of costs awarded against local authorities in such circumstances is likely to be considerable. When considering whether it is just to make an award of costs against a local authority in circumstances such as those of the present case it is legitimate to have regard to the competing demands on the limited funds of the local authority.

 

42. In the context of care proceedings it is not right to treat a local authority as in the same position as a civil litigant who raises an issue that is ultimately determined against him. The Children Act 1989 imposes duties on the local authority in respect of the care of children. If the local authority receives information that a child has been subjected to or is likely to be subjected to serious harm it has a duty to investigate the report and, where there are reasonable grounds for believing that it may be well founded, to instigate care proceedings. In this respect the role of a local authority has much in common with the role of a prosecuting authority in criminal proceedings. It is for the court, and not the local authority, to decide whether the allegations are well founded. It is a serious misfortune to be the subject of unjustified allegations in relation to misconduct to a child, but where it is reasonable that these should be investigated by a court, justice does not demand that the local authority responsible for placing the allegations before the court should ultimately be responsible for the legal costs of the person against whom the allegations are made.

 

43. Since the Children Act came into force, care proceedings have proceeded on the basis that costs will not be awarded against local authorities where no criticism can be made of the manner in which they have performed their duties under the Act. Wilson LJ in In re J at para 19 disclaimed any suggestion that it was appropriate “in the vast run of these cases to make an order for costs in whole or in part by reference to the court’s determination of issues of historical fact”. But, as I have indicated, there is no valid basis for restricting his approach in that case to findings in a split hearing. The principle that he applied would open the door to successful costs applications against local authorities in respect of many determinations of issues of historical fact. The effect on the resources of local authorities, and the uses to which those resources are put would be significant.

 

44. For these reasons we have concluded that the general practice of not awarding costs against a party, including a local authority, in the absence of reprehensible behaviour or an unreasonable stance, is one that accords with the ends of justice and which should not be subject to an exception in the case of split hearings. Judge Dowse’s costs order was founded on this practice. It was sound in principle and should not have been reversed by the Court of Appeal.

 

 

I’m usually a believer in Kim Hubbard’s remark “Whenever someone says, ‘it’s not the money it’s the principle’ it is always the money”    but in this case, the Local Authority involved (Hull) have clearly taken this case up to the appropriate level of judicial decision-making as a matter of principle  (they’d already paid the grandparents their costs, and weren’t seeking to recover them), and I thank them for it.

 

 

Just when I thought I was out – they pulled me back in – Michael Corleone

 

 

The second case also involves a very heavyweight group of counsel, and a case involving an Intervener. 

 

Again, it is Re T  (how thoughtless)   but this time RE:  T (Children) [2011] EWCA Civ 1818

 

 

http://www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed99436

 

(That also contains a very good summary of the case, and is indupitably going to be better than my attempt)

 

Within care proceedings, allegations were made of physical abuse and sexual abuse against one of their uncles ‘DH’  who was 18 by the time the appeal was heard, and one must assume an adolescent/child at the time the allegations were said to have occurred.

 

There were a raft of other threshold concerns in the case, and it was accepted that findings of sexual abuse, though capable of being made, were going to be challenging as opposed to straightforward.

 

The Local Authority sought, amongst other matters, a finding against the father that he had sexually abused DH and that it was this sexual abuse that had led to DH in turn abusing the other children.

 

 

At the pre-hearing review, DH did the smartest thing I have ever seen an Intervener do within care proceedings, and that is to say in terms “this doesn’t seem to be a very good idea for me to be involved in this, and I’m out”   (I hope he said it in a Duncan Bannatyne accent, but given that he was being represented by the splendid Rachel Langdale QC – my third favourite Rachel/Rachael, I somewhat doubt it)

 

The Judge agreed that he should cease to be an Intervener, and instead give evidence as a witness.  The Local Authority, supported by the father, appealed that decision.

 

The Court of Appeal determined that the appropriate decision on whether any particular allegation proceed to a finding of fact hearing is as set out in

RE A County Council v DP, RS, BS by the children’s guardian [2005] where MacFarlane LJ said:

“The authorities make it plain that, amongst other factors, the following are likely to be relevant and need to be borne in mind before deciding whether or not to conduct a particular fact finding exercise:

a) The interests of the child (which are relevant but not paramount)
b) The time that the investigation will take;
c) The likely cost to public funds;
d) The evidential result;
e) The necessity or otherwise of the investigation;
f) The relevance of the potential result of the investigation to the future care plans for the child;
g) The impact of any fact finding process upon the other parties;
h) The prospects of a fair trial on the issue;
i) The justice of the case.”

 

 

And then went on to consider whether the allegations that the LA made that directly involved DH  (that he had abused the children, and that had arisen because he had himself been abused by father) were such that they needed to remain live issues in the case.  The resonant (though unpleasant to the squeamish) phrase “the allegations of sexual abuse have come dripping in during the course of the proceedings”  kept being used in the judgment.

 

The finding of fact hearing that was already listed was down for 20 days, and had five silks, six if Miss Langdale QC remained representing DH.

 

The father’s case was essentially that DH could not be relied upon as a witness and was of bad character – as a witness there would be limits in what could be put to him, whereas as an Intevenor, it would be possible to go further. There were, the father submitted, significant problems in the LA seeking a finding that the father had sexually abused DH without considering what was the root of that finding (the allegations that DH had abused the other children)

 

The Court of Appeal considered that it was a matter for the trial judge to determine what allegations it was appropriate to consider in a finding of fact hearing and which were peripheral, and therefore whether DH was required to be an Intervener, or whether he could be discharged as an Intervener and merely be a witness

 

24. The problem, therefore, is essentially one of case management.  Was the judge entitled to regard this as peripheral?  In my judgment, yes.  The main complaint is of emotional abuse.  The main complaint of sexual abuse lies at the door of M, not of P or DH.  The sexual allegations against them towards children of the family are not strong.  The sexual allegations relating to KE when he was nine or ten and she was five or six are buried in the dim depths of history. It is, it seems to me, quite unfair to charge a boy now 18, damaged as he may be by life’s experiences at his home and in care, with inappropriate sexual shenanigans between those young children.  And it may not be the best pointer towards his disposition or sexual tendencies as he grows up.  I think he has a girlfriend.  I know not.  The allegations against N are again the allegations made against a boy of 13.  And the extent, therefore, to which the local authority can rely upon findings of that kind to portray that this boy in his present condition is a danger to children is a matter upon which I for my part, though it will be a matter for the judge eventually, am rather sceptical.

25. So I agree this is a peripheral issue in the case and in the context of the case the judge is also entitled to think it is disproportionate to extend this already extended trial by raising three separate allegations or two other allegations, namely N and KE, as a complication to an already complicated case.

26. I said it was a matter of case management and it is.  As things stand at the moment, it would be for the judge to judge the credibility of this boy.  He may be able to say “I am not satisfied by him, therefore I cannot be satisfied that the complaint against the father is made out.”  That is the end of it.  He can, of course, come to a conclusion that, having heard DH, he is quite satisfied that DH has in fact abused KE and N and, although he said he is not intending to make findings, he may be driven not to make findings in the care proceedings as such, but to explain his judgment by expressing his conviction in that way.

27. In any event, he, the judge, will deal with this on the disposal.  He will have seen four weeks of this case.  He will know full well how much weight to place upon the various factors and how important it is in the life of these five children whether or not this boy has done what is alleged against him. 

 

 

Unfortunately, though the principles are interesting, it is quite case specific, and doesn’t really analyse whether an Intervener can actually bail out as a strict matter of choice, having seen the totality of the evidence and taking a view that he no longer wishes to participate. 

 

It is clear that someone cannot be compelled to intervene in proceedings or compelled to be a party, because we always ‘invite X to consider becoming an intervener’   but once they are in, are they in for the long-haul, or not?

 

I think that I would argue that since one cannot stop a father, say, in care proceedings from simply ceasing to give instructions or attend Court, and effectively playing no role  [save for the possibility of witness summonsing him to give evidence]  it cannot be right that someone is forced to continue as an Intervener against their will.  But it is of course an application for leave to withdraw, and with any application, it must be at least theoretically possible for a Judge to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’  since if not, it isn’t an application at all, but a rubber stamp.

 

In this case, if the Court of Appeal HAD considered that the allegations against DH did warrant a finding of fact hearing, they could have overturned the decision to give LEAVE for DH to withdraw as an Intervener, but the Court would have been fairly powerless had DH said “I am sacking my legal team, I will not file any statement and I will not attend the hearing or make any representations unless I am witness summonsed, whereupon I will attend only to give evidence”   – he would have been an intervener in name, but not in reality.

 

I had thought that I recalled a case that findings against a non-party could only ‘stick’ if they had been an intervener, but I can’t find it, and my memory of it is going back to the late nineties, so I am probably wrong.  [It did lead me down an interesting sideline of seeing just how many of the 1990s cases about inteveners were a judicial “I should coco, sunshine, on your bike” whereas we now have people intervening at the drop of a hat]

 

 [So the long and the short of it is – as an intervener, you won’t get your costs so you may as well ‘get your coat’]

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“I need two volunteers – you, and you” – how ‘voluntary’ is voluntary accommodation?

Posted on July 31, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

A consideration of the High Court decision in CA (A Baby), Re [2012] EWHC 2190 (Fam) (30 July 2012)  and whether it is now legitimate for a social worker to ask a mother to agree voluntary accommodation of a baby.  (answer, probably not)

 

I think it would not be unreasonable to describe this case as being to section 20 what Re X was to EPOs.

 

The case can be found here :-

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2012/2190.html

 

Much of the case relates to a factual determination of applications for Care and Placement Orders, but the important bit of wider import can be found in the passages dealing with the mother’s case that her human rights had been breached by the Local Authority effectively pressuring her into agreeing section 20 voluntary accommodation of her child.

 

As far as I am aware, this is the first case dealing with the vexed issue of whether someone has genuinely agreed section 20 accommodation, and whether when the LA effectively pitch up and say “You’ve got to agree to accommodate” there is actually any element of choice involved.

23. Substantial discussions took place on the first day of the hearing (and had of course been in train for some time) which resulted in the local authority conceding the mother’s claim under Section 7 of the 1998 Act. The substance is recorded in the recitals to the order but in effect acknowledge two matters: first, that a Section 20 consent should not have been sought on 1st February 2012; and secondly, that such a removal was not a proportionate response to the risks that then existed. In the event the local authority accepts breaches of the Article 8 rights of both mother and child. The Order with its recitals is annexed to and should be read in conjunction with this judgment

24. The mother, in discussion about damages, asked that they be applied to the costs of her receiving the therapeutic input that has long been advised. The parties have agreed the payment of damages and other provisions which all accept amount to ‘just satisfaction’ of both these claims. It is important to stress that nothing in the subsequent discussion of Section 20 agreements or indeed anything else in this judgment is intended to impugn (nor should it be so read) the propriety of that resolution of the Human Rights claim to which indeed the court (since a minor is a party) specifically gives its approval.

 

So, that’s already quite a big deal – the Court (and the parties) accepting that there would be circumstances in which the LA seeking a section 20 agreement and accommodating the child as a result would be a breach of the mother’s article 8 rights and compensation of some kind is payable.

[Going back to my overarching theme of the law of unintended consequences, I hope HMCS are aware of the deluge of Emergency Protection Order applications that might flow from this sort of decision, as these s20 arrangements are often a stopgap or bridge to get into Court for an ICO hearing, which is now seemingly no longer an option]

It is important to note that there were genuine doubts about the mother’s capacity to agree to section 20 accommodation, as a result of her significant learning difficulties. At the time that the agreement was sought, the mother was also being asked about consenting to medical treatment (for herself, which would be life-saving) and to pain relief including morphine (for herself).

There must obviously have been some reservations about whether the mother was in a position to give valid agreement to accommodate the child under s20 of the Children Act 1989, but the Court go beyond that, and into a discussion of whether a Local Authority can properly invite a parent to give s20 consent if the circumstances are not such that a Court would authorise separation, before concluding that they cannot.

Obviously, that’s quite a big deal, and is something fresh in law. A parent can still ask for s20 accommodation, for whatever reason, but if a Local Authority is asking a parent to agree to it, they run the risk of a human rights financial claim if they did not, at that time, have the sort of evidence that would persuade a Court to sanction removal/separation.

  Prior to this case, as a matter of strict law, the Local Authority did not need to even have reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold criteria are made out, let alone that there was a reasonable prospect of persuading a Court to sanction separation, in order to ASK a parent to agree to s20 accommodation.

I think that there are plenty of cases – the obvious type being a mother who has previously had four or five children removed, but where the concerns are neglect-based rather than a risk of physical harm, where obtaining an EPO would be difficult and usually the first question asked by the LA lawyer of the social worker is ‘is mum willing to agree to s20 accommodation’ – it seems to me that asking that question now carries with it a degree of risk.

 

(The emboldening of key passages is author’s own)

 

27. However, the use of Section 20 is not unrestricted and must not be compulsion in disguise. In order for such an agreement to be lawful, the parent must have the requisite capacity to make that agreement. All consents given under Section 20 must be considered in the light of Sections 1-3 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

28. Moreover, even where there is capacity, it is essential that any consent so obtained is properly informed and, at least where it results in detriment to the giver’s personal interest, is fairly obtained. That is implicit in a due regard for the giver’s rights under Articles 6 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

29. Having made those observations, it is necessary specifically to consider how that may operate in respect of the separation of mother and child at the time of birth. The balance of this judgment is essentially limited to that situation, the one that arose in this case, though some observations will have a more general application.

30. It is to be assumed (as was the fact in this case) that there were reasonable grounds for believing that the child and mother should be separated and that the officers of the authority honestly believed that there were such reasonable grounds. In those circumstances a removal could be lawfully effected in one of four ways under the 1989 Act: by agreement under Section 20, by emergency protection order under Section 44, by the police under Section 46 or under an interim care order pursuant to Section 38. This range of options was considered by the Court of Appeal in A – v – East Sussex C.C. and Another [2010] 2FLR 1596. That case was not concerned with a removal at birth but it does stress the need for minimum intervention and the need to work in partnership with parents.

31. There is reasonably clear authority in respect of the compulsive powers under the Act. It is clear that court orders are to be preferred to administrative action and so Section 44 is accorded primacy over Section 46 – see Langley -v- Liverpool C.C. and Another [2006] 1WLR 375 especially per Dyson LJ at paragraphs 35-40. The regime and criteria for the use of Section 44 is fully set out in ‘X’ Council -v- B [2005] 1FLR 341 and X (Emergency Protection Orders) [2006] 2FLR 701 both approved by the Court of Appeal in A (Supra). The Court of Appeal have repeatedly returned to the subject of removal under an interim care order; for example in Re G (Interim Care Order) [2011] 2FLR 955 the authorities are reviewed and the conclusion reached that the court must consider whether the child’s safety requires removal and whether removal is proportionate in the light of the risk of leaving the child where she was.

32. On the facts of this case, it is most unlikely that any order would have been granted on 1st February. In saying that, it is of course accepted that had either the hospital required the discharge of the child or had the mother tried to procure it, an order would no doubt have been made. As it was, the mother was unable to leave and the hospital were not requiring discharge and it is probable that they would not have done so at least until the mother was fit for discharge.

33. In those circumstances the child was in a place of safety in hospital. All parties accept that in consequence the police would have had no power to remove under Section 46 and no order would have been granted under Section 44. Moreover, given the pre-birth plan and the mother’s co-operation in hospital, it is hard to see how immediate removal could have been justified let alone actually authorised under an interim care order.

34. Although many local authorities have policies and internal guidance in place in respect of post birth removals, the researches of very experienced leading counsel have not uncovered specific guidance in respect of the use of Section 20. There is none in publicly available guidance nor in any reported decision of the court. Since this removal, which would not have been sanctioned by a court, was in fact effected by consent, it is perhaps not surprising that the court is being asked to consider the proper ambit of Section 20 in this specific context.

35. It is necessary to state one obvious point which does not arise in this case but which, if not stated, will at least be thought by those inherently suspicious of local authority power: namely that it can never be permissible to seek agreement to do that which would not be authorised by order soley because it is known, believed or even suspected that no such authorisation would be given and in order to circumvent that position. That would breach all requirements of good faith and of fairness.

36. As I have already said, however, there will be cases where it is perfectly proper to seek agreement to immediate post-birth accommodation. Three obvious examples occur: first, where the mother’s intention always has been and remains to have the child placed for adoption; secondly where a parent has always accepted that the child must be removed and has consistently expressed a willingness to consent (but not of course just to acquiesce); and thirdly, where a parent whether by reason of supervening physical health or personal circumstance positively seeks accommodation of the child by social services. There will of course be others and the right to exercise parental responsibility by requesting accommodation under Section 20 and the local authority’s powers of response under Section 20(4) must be respected.

37. However, and whatever the context, Section 20 agreements are not valid unless the parent giving consent has capacity so to do. It is important to note that by Section 1(2) of the 2005 Act a person is to be presumed to have capacity unless it is established that he lacks it. Moreover, the effect of Section 1(4) is to prevent inferences of incapacity from the making of unwise decisions. Incapacity must be due on a “…impairment of, or disturbance in the functioning of the mind or brain” – Section 2(1). Capacity is issue and situation specific. It follows that not only may a person have capacity to make one decision but not another but also may have capacity at one time to make the very decision in respect of which he lacks capacity at another.

38. That can be seen in the context of this case. The fact that the mother could make decisions about surgery and pain relief does not indicate that she could make decisions about the removal of her child. Again the fact that before the birth or sometime after the birth she could make decisions about removal does not mean she could on the day of birth. This latter factor (the impact of the birth itself) is the basis on which Parliament enacted for example Section 52(3) of the 2002 Act in respect of adoption and Section 54(7) of the Human Fertilisation Act 2008 in respect of surrogacy.

39. Capacity is not always an easy judgment to make, and it is usually to be made by the person seeking to rely on the decision so obtained. Sometimes it will be necessary to seek advice from carers and family; occasionally a formal medical assessment may be required; always it will be necessary to have regard to Chapter 4 of the Code of Practice under the 2005 Act. Assistance is, however, to be found in Section 3 of the Act which provides by subsection (1) that a person is unable to make a decision if he is unable – a) to understand the information relevant to the decision, b) to retain that information, c) to use or weigh that information as part of the process of making the decision, or d) to communicate his decision… 4) The information relevant to a decision includes information about the reasonably foreseeable consequence of – a) deciding one way or the other, or b) failing to make the decision.

40. Applying that to the facts of the case, the social worker was the person finally to decide capacity and she had the views of the midwives. The key judgments to be made were probably the mother’s ability to use or weigh information surrounding removal and whether she understood that, if she refused, the child would stay in hospital with her. The first of those illustrates why a decision to agree to life-sustaining surgery is wholly different to a decision to consent to removal of the child. It is also clear that her attention was not called to the second matter at all.

 

A reading of paragraph 36 suggests (and there may be other interpretations) that separating a baby from a parent shortly after birth by way of section 20 ought to be a decision driven by the parent (that they genuinely want the child to be accommodated), and not the Local Authority seeking to cajole, influence, persuade (or if you’re cynical) browbeat, the parent into it.

 

And by implication, that such a separation, if the parent is not actively driving it, ought not to be done by s20, but instead by a decision of the Court.

One might think, very fairly, that this is right and proper, and that a parent ought not to be separated from their child because they are weak-willed or haven’t twigged that they have the right to say no when being pushed towards agreeing s20 accommodation by a social worker.

I find it a little hard to disagree with that, to be honest, but it is worth noting that this is quite a departure from where the law was prior to this decision.

Previously, it was incumbent on the parent to not say ‘yes’ to the accommodation being proposed, and for the LA to either issue or allow the child to remain with the parent. NOW, it will be incumbent on the LA to issue if they want separation and to tread extraordinarily carefully in any conversation about s20 accommodation for a baby.

It seems to me, from reading this judgment, that it might be lawful for a social worker to ask (with a huge amount of care, to explain what it means and what the possible consequences are and that the parent can say no) “do you want to voluntary accommodate your child?”  but NOT  anything like “I think it would be a good idea for your child to stay in foster care, do you agree?”

 

(I suspect that to get the wording bullet-proof on this, you’ll need something like the Miranda waiver so beloved of American cop shows… and that it will be so cumbersome that most social workers will just decide not to ask the question)

I think that this passage in particular, will be vital reading for social workers, local authority lawyers, out of hours workers, and those who might be representing parents either in the hours after the baby is born, or when a case pitches up to Court where the parents ‘agreed’ separation.

46. The following can perhaps be offered as the more important aspects –

i) Every parent has the right, if capacitous, to exercise their parental responsibility to consent under Section 20 to have their child accommodated by the local authority and every local authority has power under Section 20 so to accommodate provided that it is consistent with the welfare of the child.

ii) Every social worker obtaining such a consent is under a personal duty (the outcome of which may not be dictated to them by others) to be satisfied that the person giving the consent does not lack the capacity to do so.

iii) In taking any such consent the social worker must actively address the issue of capacity and take into account all the circumstances prevailing at the time and consider the questions raised by Section 3 of the 2005 Act, and in particular the mother’s capacity at that time to use and weigh all the relevant information.

iv) If the social worker has doubts about capacity no further attempt should be made to obtain consent on that occasion and advice should be sought from the social work team leader or management.

v) If the social worker is satisfied that the person whose consent is sought does not lack capacity, the social worker must be satisfied that the consent is fully informed: a) Does the parent fully understand the consequences of giving such a consent? b) Does the parent fully appreciate the range of choice available and the consequences of refusal as well as giving consent? c) Is the parent in possession of all the facts and issues material to the giving of consent?

vi) If not satisfied that the answers to a) – c) above are all ‘yes’, no further attempt should be made to obtain consent on that occasion and advice should be sought as above and the social work team should further consider taking legal advice if thought necessary.

vii) If the social worker is satisfied that the consent is fully informed then it is necessary to be further satisfied that the giving of such consent and the subsequent removal is both fair and proportionate.

viii) In considering that it may be necessary to ask: a) what is the current physical and psychological state of the parent? b) If they have a solicitor, have they been encouraged to seek legal advice and/or advice from family or friends? c) Is it necessary for the safety of the child for her to be removed at this time? d) Would it be fairer in this case for this matter to be the subject of a court order rather than an agreement?

ix) If having done all this and, if necessary, having taken further advice (as above and including where necessary legal advice), the social worker then considers that a fully informed consent has been received from a capacitous mother in circumstances where removal is necessary and proportionate, consent may be acted upon.

x) In the light of the foregoing, local authorities may want to approach with great care the obtaining of Section 20 agreements from mothers in the aftermath of birth, especially where there is no immediate danger to the child and where probably no order would be made.

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Forensic ferrets (or “Standing in the way of (beyond parental) control”)

Posted on July 30, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

Standing in the way of  (beyond parental) control 

A discussion of the little-used limb of the threshold criteria, and the interesting and deeply sad case of  Re K (A Child :Post Adoption Breakdown) 2012.   Plus, a judicial determination that Judges are not ferrets.  (I see how, with the ermine, folk might get confused)

The case can be found here (how I love Baiili)  :-

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2012/B9.html 

I have to say, in what’s coming up to eighteen years of care law  (my God, some of the babies I dealt with at the start of my career may now, hopefully, be going to university, and almost certainly will be legitimately buying alcohol)  I have only used the ‘beyond parental control’ limb twice; both times in relation to cases involving adoption breakdowns.

The attractiveness of it is that one does not necessarily need to apportion blame or find that it is poor or unreasonable parenting that has led to the significant harm; and it is for that reason that when it crops up, it tends to be in cases where a deeply damaged child is losing their second family. 

In this case, the Local Authority and the adoptive parents were at loggerheads about who was to blame for “Katie’s” parlous state. Without a doubt, the adoptive placement had broken down, and the relationship between “Katie” and her parents was very fraught.

This was an exchange of messages after Katie had been out of the home for a year

  1.  ‘Katie this is the first time we have heard from you in almost a year. We are glad that you liked your Christmas presents, and are enjoying your new mobile phone.

You will always hold a special place in our hearts and family. You may think that we don’t care but actually we all care more than you can ever imagine and everyone hopes that your future will be good. You will not know what we think and feel, unless you talk to us. Your medals were thrown away at Christmas when we were so upset that we were not allowed to give you anything or see you. We are sorry because it could easily have been prevented…

 

You are a very intelligent young girl and have always got good results, which we are certain will continue. You are also a talented dancer and a caring person.

 

We continue to do our best for you and are delighted to hear from you, although we know that it is difficult for you, Mum & Dad’

 

  1. Katie’s response was robust. She replied,

‘you are NOT my mum and dad for starters!…you have wrecked my childhood and you still are by contacting me, checking up on me on [Facebook]. I don’t want anything to do with you. Im extremely happy here at Greendale and I don’t need you interfering in my life anymore. You have caused enough damage in my life…’

[I pause here to say, that in the light of this sort of stuff, it is astonishing that the LA had such hostility towards the adoptive parents, and one wonders how much of the reasoning for that just didn’t come through in the judgment. The tone might not be perfect, but it’s far from awful or provocative]

Katie was diagnosed as having a reactive attachment disorder, and the Judge was deeply sympathetic to the suggestion that the efforts the parents made, which would have been kind parenting for another child simply did not work with Katie. At the same time, the Judge recognised that this was not in any sense Katie’s fault, but a symptom of her reactive attachment disorder.

[I know, you’re saying “get to the ferrets, I want to know about the ferrets”  – be patient. Your ferret-wishes will be granted]

  1. Dr Richer notes that the parents’ have strong moral values and focus on high achievement, ‘both usually applauded in our society’. However, this does not equip them easily to accept Katie unconditionally – ‘weaknesses, oddities, fears and all’. Dr Richer said that,

‘the parents need to examine to what extent their well intentioned efforts to help Katie, (which would have succeeded well with attached children) were actually perceived as emotionally distant, cold, critical and controlling. And which have lead others unfairly to characterise them as controlling, seeing them through Katie’s eyes. But the acid test here is not whether the parents have done the “right thing” from the standpoint of usual rules and values, they clearly have, but whether they have done the right things from the standpoint of achieving success with Katie. Here they have encountered the same difficulties which have defeated so many families of late adopted children.’

  1. Parents faced with the kind of difficulties these parents were faced with

’31. …get caught in a vicious circle where their normal behaviour, which works with most children, often only serves further to alienate a child like Katie. To call these not uncommon parental reactions emotionally abusive is not only inappropriate and wrong, but cruel. The vicious circles that the parents and Katie got into are seen in many families with insecure adopted children, where well intentioned efforts to help the children and structure their behaviour and protect them, only lead to the child becoming more resentful and alienated and angry…

48. Families who adopt children like Katie are often caught in what seems like a double bind. If they ease off close structuring of the child’s behaviour, the child may behave recklessly and/or antisocially, if they try to guide and structure they run the high risk of being seen by the child as restrictive and untrusting and be seen by others as controlling.’

And that was really the crux of the problem. Everyone was agreed that a Care Order had to be made, but in order to make a Care Order, there had to be threshold. 

One would think, as an outsider, that the ‘beyond parental control’ was made for that sort of situation, and one might think that the entireity of this ligitation could have been avoided had a really bland threshold  (channelling those really bland ‘unreasonable behaviour’ petitions that are written by those rare divorce lawyers who are kindly and get the job done without fuss) been prepared.

Perhaps  “Katie has suffered significant harm as a result of absconding from her placement and being unhappy there, this harm has arisen from her being beyond parental control, which is caused by her reactive attachment disorder and not due to any conscious desire to cause harm on the part of the carers, or to cause trouble on the part of Katie. It is just very sad and unfortunate that this placement, which was intended to make everyone happy, has instead made them miserable”

Anyway, that’s not what happened.  The LA threshold document contained 39 allegations, some of which were deeply contentious, and the Court ended up trapped in a battle that ran thus :-

 The LA say that Katie is beyond parental control and that’s the fault of the adopters.

The adopters say Katie is beyond parental control and that’s not their fault.

Katie says she has been significantly harmed, but it’s not her fault.

(I again, go back to the honourable and worthy practice of being bland and inoffensive if it gets the job done)

The Court was not terribly helped by the expert on this particular issue (not because he was being unhelpful, but because he was speaking the truth. The legal niceties here were contributing to screwing this poor child up) :-

  1. Dr Richer had some difficulties with the expression ‘beyond parental control’. As he put it, it is not a ‘blanket’ term; ‘it is a matter of how much and when’. There were times when Katie conformed to the family’s routine and other times when she became distressed. That distress manifested itself in behaviour such as destruction of property, running away and taking things that weren’t hers.
  1. Dr Richer acknowledged that some people will perceive a finding that a child is beyond parental control to amount to labelling and therefore likely to have a negative impact on the child. As for Katie, Dr Richer’s opinion is that if the court makes a finding that Katie is beyond parental control then, in the short term, it is likely that she will brush it aside as being ‘all their fault’. However, in his answers to written questions he makes the point that,

’34. The trouble with the legal process surrounding Orders etc. is that they are predicated on events being someone’s fault: either the parents’ failed or Katie was too bad. This is unhelpful to the therapeutic process. Since the legal process exists, the challenge would be to explain it to Katie in a way which is helpful to her. I have tried to do that in my report, emphasising, in paragraph 50, the absence of blame. So the impact on Katie is determined by how well the decisions, whatever they are, are explained to her. It would be an uphill task since it risks leaving her with a sense that it was her fault that she left her home, and so by implication she is no good, or that it is all her parents’ fault, a conclusion which will be equally damaging in the longer term.

  1. In Dr Richer’s opinion, Katie does not behave the way she does because she is beyond parental control. From his perspective as a clinical psychologist, if Katie is likely to suffer significant harm (and he did not disagree with the proposition that she is) then that is because she is suffering from a Reactive Attachment Disorder and not because she is beyond parental control.

So, broadly, the Court had to grapple with, and find a resolution to, the question “Can a child suffer significant harm as a result of being beyond parental control without it being anyone’s fault?”

The answer, is “Yes”   and the Court sets out some excellent reasoning as to how it reached that answer.

  1. ‘the child’s being beyond parental control’
  1. That leads on to consideration of the expression ‘the child’s being beyond parental control’. There is little authority on the meaning of this expression. It is an expression that appeared in earlier child protection legislation. Section 1(2)(d) of the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 provided that proof that a child ‘is beyond the control of his parent or guardian’ was sufficient of itself to empower the court to make a care order. The Children Act 1989 makes two important changes to that wording. First, the expression ‘he is beyond parental control’ is replaced by ‘the child’s being beyond parental control’. Second, proof of ‘the child’s being beyond parental control’ is not of itself sufficient to empower the court to make a care order. The court must be satisfied that the child ‘is suffering or is likely to suffer significant harm…attributable…to the child’s being beyond parental control’.
  1. The first reported authority is M v Birmingham City Council [1994] 2 FLR 141. Stuart-White J there said.

‘…Subsection (2)(a) contains a verb, in what is unquestionably the present tense…whereas subs (2)(b)(ii) contains no verb in the present or any other tense. It must be read together with the opening words of subs (2)(b) as follows: “…that the harm, or likelihood of harm, is attributable to – (ii) the child’s being beyond parental control.” The expression contained in subs (2)(b)(ii) is, it seems to me, plainly a substantival expression capable of describing a state of affairs in the past, in the present or in the future according to the context in which it falls to be applied. No doubt this is why the concept of likelihood finds no place at this point in the subsection.

Two other matters in relation to subs (2)(b)(ii) have been canvassed in argument. In relation to those I am prepared to assume for the purpose of this appeal, without deciding the point. That ‘parental control’ refers to the parent of the child in question and not to parents, or reasonable parents, in general…’

  1. The only Court of Appeal authority addressing the concept of ‘being beyond parental control’ is L (A Minor) 18 March 1997 (unreported). Butler-Sloss LJ says,

‘It is suggested most attractively by Mr Jubb in a long, careful, comprehensive skeleton argument and short, succinct oral argument to us that in order to show that a child is beyond parental control you must show some misfeasance by the parents. There is almost no authority on the phrase “beyond parental control” and certainly no authority to support the proposition, bold proposition as Mr Jubb is prepared to accept it as, that he makes to us today. We are asked to look at the useful guidance to the Children Act, Volume 1, under Court Orders, which says at paragraph 3.25:

“…the second limb is that the child is beyond parental control…It provides for cases where, whatever the standard of care available to the child, he is not benefiting from it because of lack of parental control. It is immaterial whether this is the fault of the parents or the child. Such behaviour frequently stems from distorted or stressed relationships between parent and child.”

That seems to me to be a useful summary of how those who put the Act together saw the use of what is a long-standing part of the previous child legislation of “beyond parental control”. I consider that we should be very careful not to look at the words of the Children Act other than broadly, sensibly and realistically…Quite simply this child is beyond the control of his parents. It is extremely sad. It is not a case of apportioning blame. It is a case of recognising a very worrying situation and one would have hoped, trying to work together, to make something of this child.’

  1. The Children Act 1989 Guidance and Regulations, to which Butler-Sloss LJ referred, was updated in 2008. The text and tone of the latest guidance is noticeably different from the earlier version. The guidance now states:

‘3.41 If the child is determined by the court as being beyond parental control, this means that, whatever the standard of care provided by the parents, the child is suffering or is likely to suffer significant harm because of lack of parental control. This requires the court to determine whether as a matter of fact, the child is beyond control: it is immaterial who, if anyone, is to blame. In such cases, the local authority will need to demonstrate how the child’s situation will improve if the court makes an order – how his behaviour can be brought under control, and why an order is necessary to achieve this.’

And this was how the judge dealt with threshold  (note the coruscation of the way the LA had chosen to put the case. I can actually feel in my shoulder blades how counsel for the LA must have felt whilst the Judge read all this out)

  1. These proceedings began just over a year ago. During that time the parents have attended every hearing. It has at all times been plain that they resist the making of a care order. It was with some surprise, therefore, that on the first day of this final hearing, after allowing time for discussions, I was informed that they were willing to concede both threshold and the making of a final care order. In light of my knowledge of this case I was concerned about the appropriateness of making an agreed order without hearing some evidence. I heard Dr Richer. That reinforced my view that it was not appropriate simply to nod through a final care order. I continued with the hearing as a contested hearing.
  1. I am in no doubt that that was the right decision. Hearing the evidence in this case has been highly informative. It has illuminated issues that raise significant concerns about the local authority’s future management of this case.
  1. The parents concede that at the relevant date Katie was likely to suffer significant harm. On the evidence, they were right to make that concession. It is equally plain from the evidence that Katie is beyond parental control. The question of substance has been whether the likelihood of harm is attributable to Katie being beyond parental control or to the reactive attachment disorder from which she suffers.
  1. It is plain from the guidance given by Lord Nicholls in Lancashire County Council v B that the likelihood of harm may be attributable to more than one cause. A contributory causal connection suffices. In this case it could, of course, be said that the fact that Katie is beyond parental control is itself attributable to the fact that she is suffering from reactive attachment disorder. That may be so. However, that argument cannot be allowed to subvert the primary purpose of s.31(2) which is one of child protection.
  1. This final hearing has been dominated by the issue of culpability. Notwithstanding its belated decision to seek to satisfy the court that threshold is proved on the basis of s.31(2)(b)(ii) rather than s.31(2)(b)(i) the local authority has continued to put before the court a case which, at its heart, is one based upon culpability.
  1. I noted earlier Dr Richer’s criticisms of the local authority for the tone and content of the written questions put to him in response to his report. On behalf of the local authority Miss McGrath sought to reassure me that the local authority’s questions to Dr Richer do not reflect the attitude of Children’s Social Care towards these parents. In light of my review of the history of this case since Katie’s arrival at Greendale, I am not reassured.
  1. If there was any remaining doubt about the local authority’s attitude towards these parents that doubt was removed by Miss McGrath in her closing submissions. Referring to the events that have taken placed in the period since Katie has been at Greendale, Miss McGrath submitted that the parents had utterly failed to understand the impact of their behaviour on Katie. She said ‘I don’t know how any local authority could be expected to work with parents who show those attitudes’. She described the mother’s evidence as ‘chilling for its lack of sensitivity and understanding’. She urged me not to reinforce the parents’ views that the problems are all other people’s fault and not theirs. She submitted that the parents are concerned about their reputation in the community and the impact that a care order may have upon the way they earn their living. Having urged me to avoid rhetoric and proceed only on fact, she asked me, rhetorically, why it is that stones have been thrown at a local authority that has put Katie’s interests at the forefront of its mind. Why is it, she asked, again rhetorically, that the parents are not able to agree that Katie is beyond parental control? The answer, she submits, is that these parents are entirely adult focussed. How any reasonable person could fail to accept that Katie is beyond parental control is, she said, ‘something the local authority struggles to grasp’. Where, she asked, again rhetorically, is the love that goes with the understanding of attachment disorder?
  1. The parents have had to contend with some profoundly difficult problems which they had not anticipated when they agreed to Katie being placed with them. Coping with those problems has at times (and particularly over the last two years) been rendered more challenging as a result of their difficult relationship with the local authority. I have had the opportunity to observe the parents in court several times over the last twelve months. They have attended every court hearing. During the course of this final hearing they gave evidence over the course of more than three hours. I have formed a favourable impression of them. In their evidence I found them to be open and straight-forward.
  1. Sympathy for the parents’ predicament must not blind the court to the undoubted fact that they have not always responded as appropriately as they might have done to the problems that have arisen in parenting Katie. They accept that. Having successfully parented Chloe and Rachel they have struggled to adapt their parenting style to address the challenges that Katie has presented. They have struggled to accept and follow advice. They have behaved inappropriately in some of the things they have said, done and written. Some of the things they have said, done and written have undoubtedly caused Katie distress. Miss McGrath challenged the mother that some of her responses to Katie had been motivated by spite. Looked at in isolation, I accept that that is how it may appear. But the parents’ responses to Katie should not be looked at in isolation. They have to be looked at in the context of the fact that Katie suffers from reactive attachment disorder of childhood.
  1. Although these parents are not above criticism, their parenting, insensitive and inappropriate as it has sometimes been, has not been the cause of Katie’s reactive attachment disorder. The cause of her attachment disorder was the appalling parenting she received in her first four years of life. The fact that Katie is beyond parental control is a manifestation of the attachment disorder. I am not persuaded that the shortcomings in the parenting provided by Katie’s adoptive parents has either caused or exacerbated the problem. Dr Richer was clear that in his professional opinion these parents are not responsible for Katie’s difficulties. As I noted earlier, he said that parents faced with the kind of difficulties these parents were faced with

’31. …get caught in a vicious circle where their normal behaviour, which works with most children, often only serves further to alienate a child like Katie. To call these not uncommon parental reactions emotionally abusive is not only inappropriate and wrong, but cruel…’

I accept Dr Richer’s evidence.

  1. Though I do not accept the local authority’s position on parental culpability, I am satisfied that the facts set out in the threshold document justify a finding that Katie is beyond parental control. They also justify a finding that Katie was likely to suffer significant harm and that that likelihood was attributable to her being beyond parental control. I am satisfied that the threshold is met.

Forensic ferrets

I adore how the polite exasperation pours through these sentences. One can almost feel the Judge reaching for a bottle of Milk of Magnesia and being able to attribute this particular ulcer to this particular issue…

  1. Before I consider the history of the placement it is necessary to say something about the presentation of the local authority’s records. In charting the history of a local authority’s engagement in the life of any family, its records are a key source of information. When a family becomes involved in court proceedings, those records are likely to be an important part of the forensic enquiry. In this case, the standard of the local authority’s presentation of that material to the court has fallen far below that which the court is entitled to expect.
  1. The required content and format of court bundles is set out in simple, clear, easy-to-follow terms in Practice Direction 27A to the Family Procedure Rules 2010. The Practice Direction’s repeated use of the word ‘shall’ makes it clear that compliance with the Practice Direction is mandatory. The Practice Direction requires that bundles ‘shall contain copies of all documents relevant to the hearing, in chronological order…paginated and indexed’. It goes on to provide that the bundle ‘shall be contained in one or more A4 size ringbinders or lever arch files (each lever arch file being limited to 350 pages)’.
  1. In the index to the hearing bundle in this case, section K is described as ‘Social Care documents’. This section runs to 1,350 pages. It is contained within three lever arch files. The documents in this section are not in chronological or, indeed, in any other discernable order. There is no indexing of these documents. Several documents appear more than once at different points throughout this section. Even accepting that some degree of redacting may have been necessary, it is difficult to understand the purpose of including more than 150 pages in which the entirety of the text has been completely blacked out.
  1. This key section of the hearing bundle is disorganised and chaotic. In the words of Bracewell J, it is ‘a jumbled mass of documentation’ (Re E (Care Proceedings: Social Work Practice) [2000] 2 FLR 254 at p. 257). It has hindered rather than assisted the forensic process. Twenty years ago Ward J (as he then was) memorably made the point that ‘judges are not forensic ferrets’ (B-T v B-T [1990] 2 FLR 1 at p.17). The pressure under which modern family judges are required to work is such that they simply do not have the time to be ‘forensic ferrets’ searching through inadequately prepared and disorganised hearing bundles in order to identify key information.

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