Social Services were like the SS of Nazi Germany

Posted on October 17, 2018 by suesspiciousminds

It won’t be the first time anyone in family cases has heard that comparison, but it is certainly the first time I’ve heard it from a Judge.

I’m very grateful to Ian from Forced Adoption for bringing this story to my attention. It arises from an appeal in Sheffield Crown Court from a criminal trial, where a father was convicted of harassing a school.

The conviction was upheld on appeal but the Judge was extremely sympathetic to the father and extremely critical of the social workers and social work that had put him in that position.

We don’t have a judgment in this case – you’d only really get a judgment in a criminal case if it was a criminal Court of Appeal decision, otherwise you just get judicial summing up and sentencing remarks, which are not generally published. I don’t know whether the Ministry of Justice will publish these judicial comments in full (which are a matter of public interest, if anonymised) .

So the quotations come from the Court reporters who were present, and we have to proceed on the basis that they are accurate. If the Local Authority involved want to respond to this, I’m more than happy to print their response, but I appreciate that for data protection and confidentiality issues they may not be able to.

Here’s the Press report. (I expect some of the nationals might well be in touch with the Barnsley Chronicle to run this story.)

https://www.barnsleychronicle.com/article/draconian-social-services-blasted-by-judge

From the story, four things seem to have happened

  1. A six year old whose mother had committed suicide ten weeks earlier told her school that she ‘wanted to be with her mummy’ and that was reported by the school to social workers
  2. A referral was received by social workers suggesting that the paternal grand- father had sexually abused the child, that allegation was not substantiated.
  3. The father was either asked or told, to agree to a child protection medical (or one took place without his consent – the article gives two conflicting accounts on this), where the child was intimately examined to see if there was any sexual abuse.
  4. The father became outraged at the school for putting the child through this, and started a campaign of harassment including derogatory leaflets about the school and headteacher.

The father was then convicted of harassment against the school. He appealed that, unsuccessfully, but the Judge attributed a lot of responsibility for the situation on the social workers.

However, he blasted social services for their handling of the case. They became involved after an unrelated allegation – which police said was unfounded – was levelled against his father. That led to social services investigating the youngster’s welfare and temporarily stopped her from seeing with her grandfather, contact which has now resumed.

“Social services were like the SS of Nazi Germany,” Judge Moore said. “They’re literally the SS in their name and their manner of working is somewhat draconian.

“But the facts are clear. I have sympathy for the appellant as I did at the beginning of this case, but what came afterwards was the harassment of a headteacher when really the school were only following their orders.

“Had the headteacher have argued against social service officers’ intervention, they would have found themselves before a disciplinary hearing.”

Generally speaking, either parental consent or a Court order should be obtained before conducting a medical examination of a child, particularly an intimate one.

It isn’t clear to me whether the father consented (but felt under duress to do so) or wasn’t asked.

The article opens with

A JUDGE likened Barnsley social services to the Nazi Party’s SS after a young girl who had expressed suicidal thoughts was subjected to a naked medical examination without her father’s consent.

which suggests no consent

But later, the father is quoted as saying

Speaking after the hearing, he told the Chronicle: “Despite previous investigations finding no evidence of any risk of sexual abuse, I was forced to allow Barnsley social services to take my daughter out of school and transport her to Barnsley Hospital where, without my consent, she was stripped naked and examined from head to foot.

Which suggests that he did allow the child to be taken for the medical, but did not know or agree to the medical being of the nature it ended up being. Obviously have no way of knowing whether or not he is right about that, because we don’t have a forensic judgment looking at all of the evidence and reaching a conclusion, but he was certainly left feeling considerably aggrieved after the investigation, and a Judge felt that there was considerable force in some of his complaints, to the point of using extremely strong language of condemnation.

What I don’t know in this case is whether it was the circumstances in which the medical came about that the Judge was appalled by, or whether he was just appalled that the child was medically examined at all (which rather depends on exactly what the original allegation about dad was about, and whether the medical examination was proportionate to the allegation). I don’t know whether this Judge also has a care ticket, but I’d expect even a Judge who exclusively does crime to be familiar with medical examinations for alleged sexual abuse. It might be that the allegation, on examination was so patently threadbare or malicious that the child should not have been put through a medical and wasn’t a credible allegation. I don’t know.

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Copy that, copy cat

Posted on October 16, 2018 by suesspiciousminds

 

 

The only usual intersection between family lawyers and copyright is the wail of annoyance you get when you are drafting a document with bullet points (a)-(f) and you find that at the third point, the c wants to turn into a little copyright symbol.

 

Well, that and memories of doing your schoolwork and noting someone peeking over at your work you write a quick © on it to prevent someone copying it. Generally this is accompanied by the chant of ‘copycat, copycat, don’t know what you’re looking at’ (this is generally frowned upon in Court)

 

 

 

But I’ve seen a couple of judgments coming onto Bailli, where the rubric asserts Crown Copyright, for example this one (not singling this one out, it is happening quite a bit at the moment)

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2018/2658.html

 

 

This Transcript is Crown Copyright. It may not be reproduced in whole or in part other than in accordance with relevant licence or with the express consent of the Authority. All rights are reserved.

 

(the judgment itself is interesting, and there are all sorts of things within it which would be worthy of discussion, but who wants to go off and get a licence to be able to quote from a Crown Copyright document? Not me, that’s for sure)

 

That sounds very much as though you are not allowed to quote from it unless you have a licence, or express consent to do so. That’s a bit of a problem for journalists, or bloggers, or any advocate who wants to quote it in a skeleton or case summary, or Judge who wants to quote it in a judgment, or litigant in person or MacKenzie Friend who wants to quote it in a case.

I think this is being wrongly added to judgments, and it should stop. I don’t know whether it is a conscious decision or just some cut and paste being done without thinking it through.

I’m afraid I’m just about to hit you with some Copyright law, but the tl;dr bit is that in this paragraph

 

This Transcript is Crown Copyright. It may not be reproduced in whole or in part other than in accordance with relevant licence or with the express consent of the Authority. All rights are reserved.

I think only the first four words are right.

 

So first, what is Crown Copyright?

Crown copyright is a form of copyright claim used by the governments of a number of Commonwealth realms. It provides special copyright rules for the Crown, i.e. government departments and (generally) state entities.”Copyright protects original expression in literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works”. Each and every single Commonwealth realm has its own distinct Crown copyright regulations….Crown copyright applies “where a work is made by Her Majesty or by an officer or servant of the Crown in the course of his duties”. The Crown can also have copyrights assigned to it.

 

I think the document is CAPABLE of attracting Crown Copyright, being a work created by an officer of the Crown (a Judge) in the course of their duties. There is original expression, and a judgment is a literary work. Some of them might have more literary merit than others, but they are all literary works.

 

The legislation is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 2008

163 Crown copyright.

(1)Where a work is made by Her Majesty or by an officer or servant of the Crown in the course of his duties—

 

(a)the work qualifies for copyright protection notwithstanding section 153(1) (ordinary requirement as to qualification for copyright protection), and

(b)Her Majesty is the first owner of any copyright in the work.

 

(2)Copyright in such a work is referred to in this Part as “Crown copyright”, notwithstanding that it may be, or have been, assigned to another person.

(3)Crown copyright in a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work continues to subsist—

(a)until the end of the period of 125 years from the end of the calendar year in which the work was made, or

(b)if the work is published commercially before the end of the period of 75 years from the end of the calendar year in which it was made, until the end of the period of 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which it was first so published.

(4)In the case of a work of joint authorship where one or more but not all of the authors are persons falling within subsection (1), this section applies only in relation to those authors and the copyright subsisting by virtue of their contribution to the work.

 

So the copyright provisions on a judgment published in 2018 last until 2143. I suppose there might still be an interest in a judgment 125 years from now (we do still cite very old cases from time to time) but that’s certainly no use for a topical blog. There’s absolutely no chance that readers in 2143 will be interested in my pop culture references of the 1980s and 1990s, even if I do get my brain preserved in a jar so that I can keep writing.

 

However, there are two valid exceptions in the copyright provisions, which mean that I think that applying for a licence or permission to quote from a published judgment is not necessary.

Section 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 2008 says there’s no copyright in fair use for review or reporting

 

30 Criticism, review, quotation and news reporting.

 

(1)Fair dealing with a work for the purpose of criticism or review, of that or another work or of a performance of a work, does not infringe any copyright in the work provided that it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement [F2 (unless this would be impossible for reasons of practicality or otherwise)] [F3 and provided that the work has been made available to the public].

 

[F4 (1ZA)Copyright in a work is not infringed by the use of a quotation from the work (whether for criticism or review or otherwise) provided that—

(a)the work has been made available to the public,

(b)the use of the quotation is fair dealing with the work,

(c)the extent of the quotation is no more than is required by the specific purpose for which it is used, and

(d)the quotation is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement (unless this would be impossible for reasons of practicality or otherwise).]

 

[F5(1A)

For the purposes of [F6subsections (1) and (1ZA)] a work has been made available to the public if it has been made available by any means, including—

(a)the issue of copies to the public;

(b)making the work available by means of an electronic retrieval system;

(c)the rental or lending of copies of the work to the public;

d)the performance, exhibition, playing or showing of the work in public;

(e)the communication to the public of the work,

 

but in determining generally for the purposes of [F7those subsections] whether a work has been made available to the public no account shall be taken of any unauthorised act.]

 

(2)Fair dealing with a work (other than a photograph) for the purpose of reporting current events does not infringe any copyright in the work provided that (subject to subsection (3)) it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement.

 

 

(3)No acknowledgement is required in connection with the reporting of current events by means of a sound recording, film [F8 or broadcast where this would be impossible for reasons of practicality or otherwise].

 

[F9(4)To the extent that a term of a contract purports to prevent or restrict the doing of any act which, by virtue of subsection (1ZA), would not infringe copyright, that term is unenforceable.]

 

If you are writing about a judgment for the purpose of sharing news, critiquing it or reviewing it, you can quote from it, as long as you acknowledge who the author was, and your use of quotations is fair in conveying what you are discussing. (That’s what lets book reviewers put quotations from the book in the review, but stops them just printing large chunks of it unless the publication pays the author for the serialisation rights)

That doesn’t help with advocates wanting to cite the case and highlight certain passages though, so more importantly, it also seems to me that section 45 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 2008 means that no such licence or express consent is needed

 

 

 

45 Parliamentary and judicial proceedings.

 

 

(1)Copyright is not infringed by anything done for the purposes of parliamentary or judicial proceedings.

 

 

(2) Copyright is not infringed by anything done for the purposes of reporting such proceedings; but this shall not be construed as authorising the copying of a work which is itself a published report of the proceedings.

 

For example, in the Dan Brown Da Vinci Code case where it was alleged that Dan Brown had stolen his ideas from another book, neither of the authors could claim that the Judge, in setting out quotations from the book was breaching their copyright. S45 (1), but for our purposes s45(2) means that reporting such a judgment is not infringing any copyright. And what you are doing when you cite a passage from a case is giving a report of the decision the Court made and the factors that influenced that decision. Hence, reporting.

The second part of s45(2) says in effect that if someone writes a dazzling analysis of a piece of judgment or a fabulous analogy about adoption law and passive aggressive post-it notes on a student fridge, and then someone else chooses to lift all of that dazzling analysis into their submissions or skeleton without crediting the original author, THAT can be a breach of copyright.   (For my part, I’m happy for people to steal any of my stuff, as long as they name-check me, and I’ve never come across any example of people not doing that)

 

So, you* can continue as you were, unless you are responsible for that Crown Copyright rubric being added, in which case I’d prefer that the practice stops, because I think it adds nothing and has the potential to make people who intend to use them for perfectly legitimate aims .

 

(* By ‘you’ there, I mean ‘me’, because I’m not giving you legal advice about copyright law and I would not claim for an instant that I was in a position to do so. I’m NEVER giving legal advice to any individual on this blog, but sometimes it is just worth reiterating that)

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Magical sparkle powers (repeat to fade)

Posted on October 8, 2018 by suesspiciousminds

 

The quirky case of Mostyn J and the using magical sparkle powers to place a child in quasi secure accommodation under inherent jurisidiction (child met test for secure but no secure beds) but wait, the child is consenting to their detention, has come up for appeal

 

Original blog here (and yes, I super simplified the issues in that quick summary)

Magical sparkle powers, secure accommodation and consent

 

The appeal is here

 

Re T (A Child) 2018

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2018/2136.html

 

In the Mostyn J case, the Judge decided that whilst a valid and enduring consent could block the Court’s use of the inherent jurisdiction (and perhaps s25 Secure Accommodation), what he was presented with was not in fact a genuine and enduring consent. The young person had capacity to agree to their detention, but the Judge thought that is was not a consent given with the intent of honouring it (which may be supported by the evidence of said young person escaping from the secure unit shortly afterwards)

 

The Court of Appeal decided that Mostyn J was wrong, though not for the reason the appeal was brought. The appeal was saying ‘don’t add that ‘enduring’ component to consent’  and the Court of Appeal said that in a secure accommodation or quasi-secure accommodation setting, lack of consent of young person wasn’t required and thus their giving consent did not prevent a Judge making the order or using the inherent jurisdiction.

In effect, Mostyn J had been persuaded that consent was more significant than it in fact was, and it wasn’t necessary to add the gloss that he applied to reach the right outcome.

 

The technical bits follow in bold, skip if you like – there’s better stuff after that of a wider interest

 

Discussion: Is a lack of valid consent a pre-requisite to the exercise of the inherent jurisdiction authorising restriction of the liberty of a young person?

  • Although the point is now conceded for the purposes of this appeal, it is helpful to record brief reasons why the Appellant’s concession on the question of whether a lack of valid consent is a pre-requisite to the exercise of the inherent jurisdiction to restrict liberty was correctly made.
  • On the basis of the ECtHR and domestic case law, and on the basis of the statutory scheme for secure accommodation in CA 1989, s 25 and SSW(W)A 2014, s 119, it is clear that, whilst a lack of valid consent may be an element in determining whether a person is deprived of their liberty in any given circumstances for the purposes of Art 5, lack of consent is not a jurisdictional requirement either for making a statutory secure accommodation order or for the High Court to exercise its inherent jurisdiction to authorise a local authority to restrict a young person’s liberty. That conclusion is established on the following four bases:

 

a) The consent, or otherwise, of the young person is not a relevant factor in the statutory scheme;

b) There is no domestic authority to the effect that it is necessary to find an absence of valid consent before the court may authorise a local authority to restrict the liberty of a young person;

c) To hold otherwise would be to confuse the distinct temporal perspectives of Art 5 and an application for authorisation;

d) It would also mistake the purpose of an order under the inherent jurisdiction authorising the placement of a child in the equivalent of secure accommodation.

(a) The statutory scheme does not require lack of consent

  • The consent, or lack of it, of the young person who is the subject of a secure accommodation application is not a factor to which reference is made in any part of the statutory scheme under CA 1989, s 25 or SWW(W)A 2014, s 119. The statutory scheme has been held to be compatible with, and not in breach of, ECHR Art 5.
  • The fact that ‘consent’ is not a factor in the statutory scheme, in contrast to the requirements of Art 5 when determining whether there has been a deprivation of liberty as established by the second element of Storck, points up the essential difference between the two processes. Section 25 and s 119 are concerned with the authorisation of the placement of a child in secure accommodation: “… a child … may not be placed … in accommodation … for the purpose of restricting liberty (“secure accommodation”) unless …”. By s 25(2) and s 119(2) regulations may ’empower the court from time to time to authorise a child to be kept in secure accommodation’ for such period as the regulations may specify. Where the statutory criteria in s 25(1) or s 119(1) are satisfied the court ‘shall’ or ‘must’ ‘make an order authorising the child to be kept in secure accommodation’ (s 25(3) and s 119(3)) – see Re M (Secure Accommodation).
  • The effect of a court order under s 25 or s 119 is, therefore, to ‘authorise’ the applicant local authority to keep the subject child in secure accommodation. The effect of authorisation under s 25 is most clearly demonstrated by s 25(5A) which spells out the effect of a secure accommodation order for a placement in Scotland:

 

(5A) Where a local authority in England or Wales are authorised under this section to keep a child in secure accommodation in Scotland, the person in charge of the accommodation may restrict the child’s liberty to the extent that the person considers appropriate, having regard to the terms of any order made by a court under this section. [emphasis added]

  • In contrast to a sentence of imprisonment passed by a criminal court, a local authority is not required to restrict the liberty of a young person who is the subject to a secure accommodation order; s 25 and s 119 do no more than establish a system for the authorisation of such placements. The statutory scheme is therefore focused upon whether or not the factual circumstances are such as to be sufficiently serious to justify restricting liberty.
  • The welfare of the child, whilst relevant, is not the paramount consideration for a court when determining an application for a s 25 or s 119 order (Re M (Secure Accommodation Order) [1995] 1 FLR 418). The judgment of Butler-Sloss LJ (as she then was) in Re M justifies reading in full, but the reasons supporting her conclusion, with which Hoffmann LJ and Sir Tasker Watkins agreed, included the following:

 

a) Section 25 sits within Part 3 of CA 1989 which is structured to cast upon the local authority duties and responsibilities for children in its area, including those who are being looked after.

b) The general duty of a local authority under Part 3, which is to safeguard and promote the child’s welfare, is not the same as the duty of a court under CA 1989, s 1 to afford paramount consideration to the child’s welfare.

(b) No domestic authority requires there to be a lack of valid consent

  • Save possibly for the decision of Keehan J in Local Authority v D to which I will now turn, and, of course, Mostyn J’s decision in the present case, this court has not been taken to any authority for the proposition that a lack of valid consent is a necessary jurisdictional pre-requisite before the High Court may exercise its inherent jurisdiction to authorise restriction of liberty. The role of the High Court, in holding as closely as possible to the scheme of s 25 and s 119 in these cases, is that of determining whether a local authority is to be authorised to restrict liberty.
  • This court was told that, in the present case, since the making of the order in March, the regime at the second placement has been relaxed so that the appellant now spends over three hours each day of ‘free time’ with the expectation that the amount of free time will increase by 30 minutes each week. The relaxation of the regime was a matter within the discretion of the local authority under the structure of the order made by Mostyn J who, rather than requiring restraint, had simply sanctioned its use.
  • In like manner to the effect of a secure accommodation order, an order under the inherent jurisdiction in these cases does not itself deprive a young person of his or her liberty, it merely authorises the local authority (or those acting on their behalf) to do so. This distinction was, unfortunately, not made sufficiently clear by Keehan J in Local Authority v D when he summarised the issue before the court (at paragraph 9) in terms of determining whether or not C was deprived of his liberty. With respect, the issue in such cases is, rather, whether the court should give a local authority the authority to deprive a young person of their liberty should they consider that that is necessary. In the event, Keehan J’s determination turned on the different basis that, because of the agreement of the young person it was not necessary for the court to give such authority to the local authority at that time.

 

(c) The different perspectives of Article 5 and an application for authorisation

  • This further consideration also points to the same overall conclusion. A determination that a person has or has not been deprived of their liberty in breach of Art 5 will often be a retrospective evaluation of the individual’s current and past circumstances. In that regard the question of whether or not they have or had consented to the restrictive regime is likely to be an important element; one cannot normally be said to be deprived of liberty when one has freely agreed to the relevant regime. This is in contrast to the court’s role under s 25 and s 119 or under the inherent jurisdiction, where the court’s perspective is normally prospective, determining whether circumstances exist that justify a local authority placing a child or young person in accommodation for the purpose of restricting their liberty.

 

(d) The purpose of an order under the inherent jurisdiction authorising the placement of a child in the equivalent of secure accommodation.

  • The need for an order authorising a local authority to place a child in the equivalent of secure accommodation derives from two factors. The first, and fundamental aspect, is to ensure that the absence of available secure accommodation does not lead to the structure imposed by s 25 being avoided. The terms of s 25 should be treated as applying to the same effect when a local authority is placing a child or proposing to place a child in the equivalent of secure accommodation. When viewed from this perspective, it is clear that a local authority cannot invest itself with the requisite authority and that a child’s agreement or consent cannot authorise such a placement. Neither the local authority nor a child/young person can authorise what Parliament has decided only the court can authorise.
  • The second factor derives from Article 5. The court’s authorisation means that if the authorisation is used for the purposes of depriving a child of their liberty the legal requirements of Article 5 will also have been fulfilled: see Re K (Secure Accommodation Order: Right to Liberty) [2001] 1 FLR 526. The court will necessarily have determined that the child’s welfare justifies, or even requires, him/her being deprived of their liberty for the purposes of maintaining the placement in the secure accommodation.
  • Drawing these matters together, once it is seen that the court’s power under s 25 / s 119 is not dependent upon any question of consent, the difficulties that arose in this case, as it was presented to the judge and, initially, to this court, disappear. The fact that any consent may or may not be ‘valid’ or ‘enduring’ on the day the order is sought, or at any subsequent point, or that a ‘valid’ consent is later withdrawn, is irrelevant to the scope of the court’s powers, whether they are exercised under statute or under the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court. The existence or absence of consent may be relevant to whether the circumstances will or will not amount to a deprivation of liberty under Art 5. But that assessment is independent of the decision that the court must make when faced with an application for an order authorising placement in secure accommodation, registered or otherwise.
  • This approach, where the question of whether or not an Art 5 deprivation of liberty occurs depends upon the facts on the ground at a particular time and is not necessarily required by, or created by, the court order but by the act of those caring for the child under the court’s authorisation, accords with the ECtHR jurisprudence summarised at paragraph 23 and onwards above.

 

Further, the need for there to be an absence of valid consent before the Storck criteria are established, does not mean that the presence of an apparently valid consent prevents the circumstances from amounting to a deprivation of liberty (see De Wilde, Ooms and Versyp, Storck para 75 and Buzadji). In terms of domestic authority, paragraphs 23 to 31 of MM and PJ could not be more clear – “where conditions amounting to a deprivation of liberty are compulsorily imposed by law, the agreement of an individual cannot prevent that compulsory confinement from constituting a deprivation of liberty”. In like manner, it is to be recalled that the court in De Wilde stated:

“Finally and above all, the right to liberty is too important in a “democratic society” within the meaning of the Convention for a person to lose the benefit of the protection of the Convention for the single reason that he gives himself up to be taken into detention. Detention might violate Article 5 even although the person concerned might have agreed to it” [emphasis added].

Conclusion

  • It inevitably follows from the above analysis, and from the Appellant’s concession, that Mostyn J’s initial misgivings were well-placed but that he was unfortunately drawn into a legally erroneous position by accepting that it was necessary for the court to find a lack of valid consent before it could grant the local authority’s application. In the circumstances any question of the judge being correct in adding the gloss of ‘enduring’ to this non-existent jurisdictional requirement falls away.
  • I should make clear that this case does not concern the placement of children in other than the equivalent of secure accommodation. Different considerations will apply when an application is directed towards, and only directed towards, a deprivation of liberty. In that situation, subject to De Wilde, the question of whether or not the subject of an application to authorise the deprivation of liberty of a young person under the inherent jurisdiction is in agreement with the proposed regime may form part of an evaluation of whether such authorisation is necessary. Local Authority v D is an example of a case where the judge concluded that the young person’s stance rendered a court order unnecessary.
  • Conversely, as referred to above, once the court has authorised placement in secure accommodation or its equivalent, it may properly be considered that the matter can be left to those who are authorised to operate the care regime on a day to day basis and, as in the present case, they may work with the young person in a flexible manner using their powers of restriction or deprivation when necessary, but relaxing them when it is safe and appropriate to do so. Such issues are fact-specific to each case and are not matters of jurisdiction.
  • The Appellant’s appeal, as it had become by the close of argument, is now no more than a challenge to the judge’s discretion and could only succeed if this court were to be satisfied that the judge was wrong to grant authorisation to the local authority notwithstanding the apparent consent of the young person. There is no basis for holding that Mostyn J was ‘wrong’ to authorise restriction of liberty in this case. Indeed, as the judge himself observed, the breakdown of the placement so soon after the January order had been made vindicated his determination on that occasion; it also justified the making of a further order in respect of the new placement.

 

 

The Court of Appeal also made broader comments about the chronic and acute lack of beds for children who present with these difficulties, and the inherent unsuitability of using the inherent jurisdiction as a sticking plaster for the lack of bed space.

 

  1. This appeal relates to the exercise of the inherent jurisdiction by the High Court, Family Division when called upon to make orders which, but for a lack of capacity in the statutory system, would be made as secure accommodation orders under Children Act, 1989, s 25 (CA 1989).
  3. Official figures published by the Department for Education[1] show that, as at 31 March 2018, there were some 255 places in secure children’s homes in England and Wales. These places are taken up either by young people sent there through the criminal justice system or under CA 1989, s 25 secure accommodation orders. As will be explained more fully below, a child who is being looked after by a local authority in England or Wales may only be placed in secure accommodation in a children’s home if that home has been approved for such use either by the Secretary of State in England or the Welsh Government in Wales. This court understands that, in recent years, there has been a growing disparity between the number of approved secure children’s homes and the greater number of young people who require secure accommodation. As the statutory scheme permits of no exceptions in this regard, where an appropriate secure placement is on offer in a unit which is either not a children’s home, or is a children’s home that has not been approved for secure accommodation, the relevant local authority has sought approval by an application under the inherent jurisdiction asking for the court’s permission to restrict the liberty of the young person concerned under the terms of the regime of the particular unit on offer.
  5. Despite the best efforts of CAFCASS Cymru (this being a case concerning a Welsh young person), it has not been possible to obtain firm data as to the apparent disparity between the demand for secure accommodation places and the limited number available, nor of the number of applications under the inherent jurisdiction in England and Wales to restrict the liberty of a young person outside the statutory scheme. The data published by the Department for Education referred to in paragraph 2 simply measures the occupancy rate within the limited number of approved secure places without attempting to record the level of demand.
  7. This court has been told by counsel, on a broad anecdotal basis, that each local authority may, on average, make an application for a restricted liberty declaration under the inherent jurisdiction in one case each year. If that is so then, across England and Wales, the total number of such applications would be in the region of 150 per year. The understanding, again anecdotal, of judges hearing these cases is that that figure is probably a very substantial under-estimate; for example, in one week recently a medium-size court outside London heard five such applications. Again, by way of example, Mr Justice Holman described the situation in one week in the High Court in 2017 with a tone of wholly appropriate concern in A Local Authority v AT and FE [2017] EWHC 2458 (Fam):
    1. “5. It appears that currently such authorisation can only be given by the High Court in exercise of its inherent jurisdiction.  This week I have been sitting here at the Royal Courts of Justice as the applications judge.  This case is about the sixth case this week in which I have been asked to exercise the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court to authorise the deprivation of liberty of a child in similar circumstances.  There are two yet further similar cases listed before me today.

6. Quite frankly, the High Court sitting here at the Royal Courts of Justice is not an appropriate resource for orders of this kind, and I personally have been almost drowned out by these applications this week.  Further, although I have no time properly to consider this today, I am increasingly concerned that the device of resort to the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court is operating to by-pass the important safeguard under the regulations of approval by the Secretary of State of establishments used as secure accommodation. There is a grave risk that the safeguard of approval by the Secretary of State is being denied to some of the most damaged and vulnerable children.  This is a situation which cannot go on, and I intend to draw it to the attention of the President of the Family Division.”

  1. It is plainly a matter for concern that so many applications are being made to place children in secure accommodation outside the statutory scheme laid down by Parliament. The concern is not so much because of the pressure that this places on the court system, or the fact that local authorities have to engage in a more costly court process; the concern is that young people are being placed in units which, by definition, have not been approved as secure placements by the Secretary of State when that approval has been stipulated as a pre-condition by Parliament

 

The need for precision about the sort of restrictions that a children’s home can place on children and the need for training, inspection and monitoring of homes that are authorised to do so sprang out of the Pindown scandal, and the ingredients are in place for us to slide back into those sorts of dreadful abuses that began with good intentions but got so far removed from how the State ought to be dealing with its most vulnerable children. I hugely applaud the Court of Appeal here – the lack of secure beds is an accident waiting to happen.

 

The wider issues and the need for scrutiny

  • Before concluding this judgment, I return to the concern (referred to in paragraph 5) that so many young people are now being placed in secure accommodation outside the statutory scheme laid down by Parliament in units which, by definition, have not been approved by the Secretary of State as secure children’s homes. Whilst the High Court has a duty to consider such cases and must come to a decision taking account of the welfare needs of the individual young person, in the wider context the situation is fundamentally unsatisfactory. In contrast to the Secretary of State, the court is not able to conduct an inspection of the accommodation and must simply rely upon what is said about any particular unit in the evidence presented to it. In like manner, where a local authority, as is typically the case, is looking to place a young person in a bespoke unit a great distance away from their home area, the local social workers must make decisions at arm’s length and, it must be assumed, often without first-hand detailed knowledge of the particular unit.
  • The wide-ranging and powerful submissions of the ALC raise issues which are beyond the compass of this appeal but nevertheless deserve consideration in other places. The ALC identifies the following four key questions arising from the fact that a parallel system now exists under the inherent jurisdiction with respect to the secure accommodation of young people who would otherwise fall within the statutory code:

 

i) What is the impact, if any, on children of there being in use two parallel processes?

ii) Is there a disparity in the adherence to due process obligations or in the safeguarding a child’s access and participation in court decisions between these two processes?

iii) Is there a disparity in the practical protection afforded to children through the two processes which may result in arbitrary unfairness?

iv) What are the effects on the Convention Rights of children and the protection of their Article 5 and 6 rights of having two processes and in particular when does the ECHR case of Storck apply?

  • In the circumstances, a direction will be made that a copy of the judgments in this case is sent to each of the following: the Secretary of State for Education, the Secretary of State for Justice, the Chair of the Education Select Committee, the Chair of the Justice Select Committee, the Welsh Government and the Commissioner for Children.

 

 

Having ended the blog proper, two bits of shameless self-promotion (I say shameless, but I’m scarlet and writhing with shame as I type, honestly)

 

  1.  I am on the shortlist for Legal Commenter of the year at the Family Law Awards.  I’ve won this before, so I didn’t want to campaign for it, feeling that the goodness should be shared. But it was amazing to be nominated, and the words said were very kind.  My readers should vote, if they can spare a minute, and if you want to vote for me that’s very sweet (but don’t feel obligated to do so)  . Voting ends on Friday 19th October, so there’s time if you want to.   https://www.familylawawards.com/ehome/familylawawards2018/vote
  2.  As this blog is about Secure Accommodation, a plug for my book In Secure, which is fiction and set in a secure accommodation unit with ten children – there’s magic, adventure, romance, shocks and scares. It’s Tracy Beaker with Tentacles basically. If you haven’t read it yet, I’d love you to read it. You can get a e-book for 99p and the gorgeous paperback for eleven quid.  If you have read it, please put a review on Amazon, it makes a huge difference. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Secure-Andrew-Pack/dp/1911586947/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1539007741&sr=8-2

 

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Separate representation of a child – a thorny problem

Posted on September 20, 2018 by suesspiciousminds

 

It is well-established that in care proceedings, if a child is capable of instructing a solicitor and disagrees with the recommendations or conclusions of the Guardian that they can be separately represented, and have their own lawyer, who takes instructions directly from them.

You don’t get many cases which describe what happens where there is a disagreement about whether the child SHOULD be separately represented  (in my experience, when the child’s solicitor says that the child has capacity and disagrees with the Guardian, it is accepted by everyone and the Court that the Child should be separately represented)

So this is a case where there was such a dispute, and the Court gave a decision, and also summed up some useful guidance. It is a CJ decision, so NOT BINDING, just informative.

 

Re Z (A Child – care proceedings – separate representation) 2018

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/OJ/2018/B57.html

First things first. It was VERY very clear that the child was extremely bright. He wrote a letter to the Court setting out a table of balancing factors in the case (a task which is beyond many of the other stakeholders in the family Courts…) and he absolutely had intellectual capacity to instruct a solicitor.  One of the barristers instructed in the case described the child as having a ‘fierce, analytical intelligence’ and that seems to me absolutely on the nose.

 

  1. To assist the experts, Z prepared a detailed ten-page statement setting out his account of what has happened in the past and his wishes and feelings so far as concerns his future.
  2. The first point to make about this letter is that it bears eloquent testimony to this young man’s considerable intellect. The quality of his writing and of his arguments suggest a maturity beyond his years.
  3. In his letter Z describes the years of abuse he suffered whilst in the care of his parents and the domestic abuse he observed between his parents. He talks about the impact all of this has had upon him, especially upon his emotional well-being. He says he finds it very difficult to understand his emotions and deal with them. He has self-harmed and explains why. He describes his mother’s mental health problems and the impact they have had on him. He says that he vividly remembers ‘trying to stop my mum from killing herself’.
  4. In his letter, Z makes it clear that the outcome he seeks is to return to the care of his parents whom he forgives for the past. He does not believe there would be a risk of further abuse if he returns home. Adopting a balance sheet approach, he analyses what he considers to be the risks and benefits of returning home. He adopts the same approach to analyse the risks and benefits of remaining with his grandparents. Finally, again adopting the same balance sheet approach, he analyses the risks and positives of him remaining either in long-term foster care or in a residential placement. So far as this last option is concerned, he argues that there are no positives. On the contrary, such a placement would damage both his mental health and his education. That could make him suicidal. He says he would run away from home.

 

It was also very clear that he disagreed with the Guardian and had his own case to run.

 

  1. Z has also written a much briefer letter to the guardian and to his solicitor, Kerry Boyes. He makes the same key points made in his letter to the experts. This, though, is a more emotional letter. He says,

‘I would like it to be known that I am going to do absolutely everything in my power to make sure that these recommendations do not happen and that I hopefully move back to my parents. If not then I stay with my grandparents…Because of the present situation, I am going to obtain proper legal advice as to what I should do next. I am going to fight to get back to my parents’ care, no matter what. Every child deserves the chance to get a proper education, feel safe and secure and feel loved and cared for. Therefore, I would think it is your duty to properly review these recommendations based upon this and really think about what is in my best interests. Is it really a good idea to take me kicking and screaming away from my grandparents’ house and into a house full of strangers.’

 

  1. After these letters, on 5 th June Z wrote a letter to me. In his letter he pleads not to be ‘kidnapped’ into foster care. If the court approves a placement in foster care or residential care, Z says,

‘I would categorically refuse to go. I would not get into the car…I would run away back to my grandparents as many times as would be needed for people to listen to me. Foster care or residential care is not the right environment for me to be in.’

 

  1. Z is particularly concerned about the possibility that a move into long-term foster care or residential care would mean that he would need to change school. He says that,

‘By moving my school, you would destroy my only support network. At school…I have the support of teachers, who at times have become like second parents, and what’s more, it is one of the only places that I can be truly happy…if you forced me to move school it would do catastrophic damage to me both emotionally, socially and developmentally.’

 

That seems, therefore, to meet the two criteria for separate representation.

The argument was whether Z had the emotional capacity to instruct a solicitor and be involved in the proceedings, and what caused particular anxiety was him having unfettered access to the court documents and papers.  I haven’t seen this argument being run, so it is interesting to see how it plays out.

The Judge, His Honour Judge Bellamy, set out the principles that he had derived from statute and authorities. (Selfishly, I think it is a shame that they are not annotated to show where each principle is derived from, but you can’t have everything)

(I have put some particular interesting elements in red for emphasis)

 

  1. In deciding whether Z has sufficient understanding to instruct his solicitor directly, the solicitor (or the judge if the issue is being decided by the court) will find guidance given by senior judges in previous cases. In particular, the solicitor must have in mind:

(1)           that the child has the right to express his views freely in all matters affecting him and the right to be heard in any judicial proceedings affecting him;

(2)           that the child has the right to respect for his private and family life;

(3)           that the decision to be made relates to this child;

(4)           that the fact that the child’s views are considered to be misguided in some way does not necessarily mean the child does not have sufficient understanding to instruct a solicitor;

(5)           that the fact that the child is unwilling to accept findings already made by the court does not mean that he does not have sufficient understanding to instruct his solicitor;

(6)           that the fact that a child disagrees with an independent professional assessment of what is good for him is not sufficient to lead to a conclusion that the child lacks sufficient understanding to instruct his solicitor;

(7)           that whether the child has the capacity to instruct his solicitor will depend, in part, upon the issues involved and the child’s capacity to give reasonable and consistent instructions on those issues;

(8)           that the child’s direct participation may pose a risk of harm to him and, if it does, the solicitor must consider whether the child is capable of understanding that risk;

(9)           that a child’s understanding increases with the passage of time;

(10)       that a child’s age is not the only relevant consideration;

(11)       that not allowing the child to participate directly in the proceedings by instructing his solicitor may itself cause the child emotional harm;

  1. If the solicitor decides that the child does not have sufficient understanding to instruct his solicitor direct, the court can be asked to review that decision. The judge will come to his own independent decision after taking into account the points just made.

 

 

Those bits in red are important – a person or young person can have capacity to instruct a solicitor and tell them what to fight for without having to be dispassionate or reasoned – you can make an emotional decision rather than a coldly logical one, as long as you have the capacity to understand the facts and that there are pros and cons to your decision. Just as a parent can decide not to follow their legal advice and to instruct their lawyer to present a different case (including one that their lawyer considers is foolish), so can a young person.

 

At the actual hearing, none of the parties were supporting Z being made a party. The LA and Guardian were against it, and the parents were essentially neutral – seeing that Z had capacity but being worried about the emotional impact on him.

 

The conclusions – red is mine for emphasis.

 

  1. All three parties accept that if the test to be applied were based solely on intellectual capacity then Z should be given permission to instruct his own solicitor. All three parties express concern about Z’s emotional capacity to be able to instruct his own solicitor and about what they perceive to be the risks of allowing him to do so. All three raise a particular concern about the likely harmful impact on Z’s emotional well-being of him having access to the court documents.
  2. Z clearly has the intellectual capacity necessary to give him the ‘understanding’ required by the rules, though I accept that intellectual capacity is not the only relevant factor the court must consider when deciding whether a child should be allowed to instruct his own solicitor.
  3. Z well understands that the ultimate welfare decision which the court must make is a decision that may have a profound impact on the future direction of his life. However, the reality is that even with the help of the best professional guidance available (and that is the position I am in) neither the professionals who give that advice nor the court can be absolutely certain of the impact decision-making today will have on the future course of Z’s life. Making decisions about Z’s future involves an element of risk. Z is as aware of the reality of that as I am.
  4. In making decisions the court will have in mind the approach required by the law that Z’s welfare must be the court’s paramount consideration. The court will also have in mind that Z has the right to respect for his private and family life
  5. Concern has been expressed in the experts’ report that Z’s wish to instruct a solicitor direct ‘is part of his bid to regain control in a system populated by adults he does not fully trust to represent his needs’. In my judgment the fact that an intelligent, articulate teenager wishes to have some control of decision-making that could have a profound effect on the future course of his life is hardly surprising. Z is astute enough to realise that as matters stand at the moment, although his Children’s Guardian will faithfully represent his views to the court she will also set out her own assessment of what the appropriate welfare outcome should be. She will make it plain that she does not agree that Z’s clearly expressed wishes and feelings accord with his best interests. She is likely, therefore, to recommend to the court that Z’s wishes and feelings should not be followed. Currently, Z does not have an advocate who will not only inform the court of his wishes and feelings but will seek to persuade the court that an outcome that accords with his wishes and feelings will meet his best welfare interests.
  6. One of the reasons why the experts do not agree that Z should be able to instruct his solicitor direct is because ‘it is our assessment that Z is profoundly confused about his own mind and about his best interest’. In my experience, that confusion and uncertainty is experienced by many adolescents who are the subject of care proceedings. I am doubtful that that is a factor which should be considered, of itself, to make it inappropriate for that young person to be given permission to instruct his own solicitor. In this case, I accept that Z himself has said that he finds it very difficult to understand his emotions and deal with them. In my judgment, that does not mean that he lacks the emotional ‘understanding’ to instruct his solicitor. On the contrary, it could be said that the fact that Z recognises his emotional challenges means that he would be able to engage in an open discussion with his solicitor about the case he wishes to put before the court.
  7. All three parties express concern about Z having access to court papers in the event that he is allowed to instruct his own solicitor. In my judgment, that concern is misconceived. Z is already a party. The decision I am called upon to make has nothing to do with the issue of party status. As a party, the rules already give him a conditional right to have access to the papers. As I noted earlier, the rules require the guardian to advise the child of the contents of any document received so long as the guardian is satisfied that the child has ‘sufficient understanding’. Whether the child should be allowed to see a particular document or simply be given a summary of that document is, for understandable reasons, a matter that is left to the discretion of the guardian. The rules impose a similar duty on the solicitor. In my judgment, that duty arises whether the solicitor receives his instructions through the guardian or direct from the child. In each case the solicitor is not under a duty to allow the child to see documents that have been served upon him but, rather, ‘if the child is of sufficient understanding [to] advise the child of the contents of any documents’ received. It is for the solicitor to come to a judgment about whether the child has ‘sufficient understanding’. If the solicitor is uncertain whether the child has ‘sufficient understanding’ and whether the child should be allowed to read a document or simply be given a summary of the contents of that document, the solicitor should seek guidance from the court. The ultimate responsibility for deciding whether a child or young person should have access to the court papers is, always, that of the court.
  8. As I noted earlier, in this case the experts have prepared for Z an excellent age-appropriate summary of its report. The authors are of the opinion that it would be detrimental to Z’s welfare for him to be allowed to read the full report. For the reasons I have already given, in my judgment, if the court were to allow Z to instruct his solicitor direct it does not follow, as a matter of law, that Z then becomes entitled to unfettered access to all of the documents placed before the court. Deciding precisely what Z should be allowed to see is a matter for the exercise of discretion and is a decision in which some regard must be had to his welfare.
  9. Mr Johal expresses concern ‘about the risk of full participation’ by Z. He submits that Z lacks the insight to fully appreciate the risks of participation. The risks he refers to are the risk arising from access to the court papers (to which I have just referred) and the risk that participation ‘has the potential to significantly contribute to Z’s documented emotional and psychological difficulties and limit the future success of any therapeutic treatment.’ He does not set out in what way there is a risk to the future of any therapeutic treatment. Z has made it very clear that he is willing to engage in therapy. I do not read the experts’ report as highlighting such a risk.
  10. Set against those risks, the decisions made by senior judges, to which I referred earlier, highlight the risk of emotional harm being caused to a young person by not allowing him to participate more fully by means of having his own solicitor. In this case, Z is very concerned indeed to ensure that his voice is heard and, in particular, to ensure that his wishes and feelings about his education are understood and respected. I am in no doubt that if he were not allowed to have his own solicitor there is a real risk that that decision would cause him emotional harm.

Conclusion

  1. I have come to the conclusion that in this case Z does have the ‘understanding’ required by the rules to enable him to instruct his own solicitor. There are no sufficient welfare reasons why that should not happen. I shall therefore order that Z has permission to instruct his own solicitor. It is important that the solicitor appointed is appropriately experienced and skilled for the task in hand. That is an issue I will return to when judgment is formally handed down.

 

 

A lot of useful content there, particularly for Guardians and children’s Solicitors.

 

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You would think this would go without saying… but it has been said

Posted on September 20, 2018 by suesspiciousminds

 

Section 91 of the Children Act 1989 says this

(1)The making of a child arrangements order with respect to the living arrangements of a child who is the subject of a care order discharges the care order.

 

and

 

(2)The making of a care order with respect to a child who is the subject of any section 8 order discharges that order.

 

(A child arrangements order with respect to living arrangements – residence in old money, ‘custody’ in Daily Mail/Eastenders parlance is a section 8 order)

 

So in plain language – if you have a residence order and you then make a care order, the residence order is discharged. If you have a care order and you make a residence order, the care order is discharged.  If one exists, the other dissolves into nothingness.  You can either have your cake, or you can eat it – you can’t both eat it and have it.

There is no Schroedinger’s Cat scenario where the child arrangements order and care order simultaneously exist *

 

(*theoretically this is POSSIBLE, but only in a universe where it is possible for a Judge to announce that there is a care order at exactly the same pico second as announcing there is a child arrangements order so they are both birthed at exactly the same instant and thus neither one of them predates the other or succeeds the other and thus neither one cancels the other out.  It will not astound you to know that the Court in this case did not manage to achieve pico second delivery of a decision. )

 

It’s therefore

(a) surprising that the Magistrates in this case made both a Care Order AND a child arrangements order

(b) not surprising that they were appealed

(c) blindingly obvious that the appeal was successful

 

This is such an obvious interpretation of section 91 that it is more than a little surprising that anyone even tried to defend the position, but such is sometimes the role of a lawyer instructed to oppose an appeal.

It was an attempt, based on the wording of section 9

 

9(1)No court shall make any section 8 order, other than a child arrangements order to which subsection (6B) applies, with respect to a child who is in the care of a local authority.

 

(section 6B being a live with order, or residence in old money)

 

Aha, argues dad’s lawyer, section 9 says that the Court CAN make a lives with child arrangements order whilst there’s a care order.

And indeed it can, and this is something that does happen.

You just then go to section 91 to see what the effect of that is, that the care order then dissolves. You can’t have both at the same time.  Can’t eat your cake and have it. One or the other.

 

A large part of me just thinks that this appeal is blindingly obvious and that nobody needed to know the answer to this question, because the Act is so clear, but obviously I’m wrong because the error was made. Hopefully nobody will do it again.

 

Re X and Y (appeal against care order) 2018

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/OJ/2018/B55.html

(I note also that whichever Judge heard this appeal from the Magistrates and published it, they didn’t choose to identify themselves…)

 

  1. Mr Powell argues that s 9 of the Children Act 1989 including the explanatory notes, makes no reference to s 91 impacting on its operation, and that s 9 does not say it is subject to s 91. He argues that s 9 (1) permits the two orders to sit alongside each other, as its terms are unambiguous and it carves out an exception to s 91. He points out that there is no explanatory note in the Family Court Practice 2018 that deals with this matter. He argues that the context of where s 9 sits in the scheme of the Children Act 1989 is important, as it is that it appears under the heading ‘Restrictions on making section 8 orders.’  Mr Powell argues: why have that if it is not to carve out an exception? He argues that this was a deliberate attempt by the legislature to carve out an exception to the general rule under the Children Act.

 

  1. Mr Laing supports the appeal. In his written submissions, he sets out the legal framework. I agree with his reasoning, both as to the correct statutory interpretation and its effect. It is a reading that is supported by the authors of Hershman and McFarlane and Clarke, Hall & Morrison . Mr Laing correctly sets out that: the only form of child arrangements order that can be made where a care order is in force is a “lives with” child arrangements order (s 9 (1) and (6B) of the Children Act 1989); the making of a “lives with” child arrangements order discharges a care order (s 91 (1)); and, the making of a care order discharges a “lives with” child arrangements order (s 91 (2)).

 

  1. Mr Laing also draws my attention to the ruling of in Booth J Hounslow Borough Council v A [1993] 1 FLR 702, where it was held,

 

“ A care order itself automatically discharges any residence order that might be existing in respect of the child at the time the order is made. As Miss Hudson submitted before me, a residence order and a care order are two orders which are incompatible. They cannot both stand together. A residence order is clearly inconsistent with a care order and vice versa” , at 706 .

 

  1. Mr Laing argues that the position has been the same since s 91 of the Children Act 1989 first came into force on 14 October 1991, and has remained the case throughout the eight iterations of section 91 since then.

 

  1. Mr Laing submits that there are good public policy reasons for that. [Generally], no order under s 8 of the Children Act 1989 can stand alongside a care order for a simple reason: once a care order is made, it is not for a court to interfere with a local authority’s exercise of parental responsibility, save for as permitted within the framework of public law proceedings.

 

  1. I agree. I find that, in error, the lay justices conflated the jurisdiction they had to make a “lives with” child arrangements order with the effect of the making of that order. Whilst they had jurisdiction to make the order, the effect is to discharge the care order, which they clearly did not intend.

 

  1. Their decision was therefore wrong. I allow the appeal and set aside para 16.2, i.e. the “lives with” component of the order d. 22 June 2018.

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Tense – nervous, headache

Posted on September 19, 2018 by suesspiciousminds

 

This is a case in which the Court of Appeal unpicked a decision of a Circuit Judge, where the tenses that were applicable to the threshold criteria became confused.

 

I don’t myself much care for the way that the constructors of section 31 brought tenses into the definition, particularly because they involve some semantic dancing on the head of a pin to the way that people actually consider the threshold in practice. I wrote earlier this year about the Court of Appeal decision that largely turned on the common conflation of ‘is suffering’ (which is what the statute says) and ‘has suffered’ (which is what everyone in Court always says, largely because you are talking about something that inevitably happened in the past but having to do so in the present tense) . In that case, having lectured everyone on the need to stick to the language of the statute ‘is suffering’, the Court of Appeal forgot its own advice and talked frequently about ‘has suffered’

 

Hence the title, and by now, you could probably do with an Anadin yourself

 

 

 

Re K (A child : Threshold findings) 2018

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2018/2044.html

 

  1. On 18 May 2018 HHJ Tolson QC sitting at the Central Family Court dismissed an application for a care order and instead made a private law order that a little girl, then aged six months, to whom I shall refer as K, should live with her mother. The basis for this outcome was that the judge found that the threshold for intervention under section 31 of the Children Act 1989 had not been made out. This appeal by K’s children’s guardian, for which I gave permission on 17 July, is supported by the local authority but opposed by the mother.
  3. Events since the making of the judge’s order have led to this appeal becoming historic. The local authority issued further proceedings on 14 August, and on 23 August K was removed from her mother’s care and placed in foster care under an interim care order. The outcome of these earlier proceedings is nevertheless of some significance as providing a baseline for future decisions. In the circumstances I describe the background in only the broadest detail and avoid making any observations that might bear on welfare decisions yet to be taken by the Family Court.

 

One might well think that a Judge who had decided that there was no likelihood of future harm for a child is on thin ice before the Court of Appeal when the appeal arrives and the likelihood of future harm has developed into actual harm leading the child to have to be removed.  That could just be bad luck, of course.

 

  1. The evidence that the judge heard showed that the mother had done reasonably well in the foster placement and that no harm had come to K since her birth. Nonetheless, when the matter came before the court for final hearing on 23 April, all parties invited the judge to adjourn to allow for further expert evidence and the assessment of other potential carers. The judge refused this application as well as other adjournment applications made during the hearing. He said in effect that he would “see where we go”. His approach led to uncertainty in the minds of the parties as to what was and what was not within the scope of the hearing. That approach is challenged in the grounds of appeal, but the parties are agreed, rightly in my view, that it is no longer necessary to investigate that aspect of the matter.
  3. In the course of his judgment the judge described the mother as having been a deeply troubled teenager. He considered the report of an independent social worker who had acknowledged the mother’s ability to look after K’s basic care in a highly supported environment but gave the opinion that her volatility would prevent her from giving safe, consistent and nurturing care in the community. That was also the opinion of the allocated social worker and of the guardian, who advised that K would not be safe if placed in her mother’s independent care. The psychiatric expert initially expressed cautious optimism but tempered this when she received the other professional opinions. The judge however did not accept this evidence, essentially on the basis of the mother’s performance since K was born. He emphasised that the language of “risks” and “concerns” was not good enough. He was impressed by the mother’s presentation in court. The judge found and was entitled to find that the mother had not been volatile around or towards K. He posed this question to himself:
    1. “Accordingly in my judgment the question whether, when the mother was first placed in the mother and baby foster placement, she was likely to be volatile around her own child has to be judged in large manner by her actual behaviour around [K]. There is no evidence that she is anything other than calm when around [K]. There have been no incidents with the foster carer despite the latter’s, as the professionals say, too-intrusive approach.”

He concluded that while there was reason to believe that the threshold was crossed at an interim stage when the proceedings began, “My judgment on this evidence is that there neither is nor was a likelihood of significant harm to this child”. He continued:

“The possibility, which I acknowledge exists, that the mother will be so volatile in future that he daughter suffers significant emotional harm is one in my judgment which can sensibly be ignored in the context of the threshold justifying state intervention. This, I emphasise, is not to say that the professionals are wrong. I can of course acknowledge that we may be back in court in months’ or even years’ time with the professionals telling me that I was the one who got it wrong. I hope I can profoundly respect their opinion. It is simply the case that on this evidence I cannot be satisfied that the ‘risks’ and ‘ concerns’ which they identify establish the necessary likelihood.”

 

 

The judicial conclusion that the case did not warrant or justify adoption or separation was not the subject of the appeal. The appeal focussed on whether the Judge was wrong in law to conclude that threshold was not crossed and whether he made two separate errors – the first, in considering the likelihood of significant harm to be based on the facts as they were at the time of the final hearing rather than at the date of issue/intervention, and second in tying together the issue of whether threshold was crossed and what the welfare decisions for the child should be.  (In effect, whilst a Judge HAS to take the harm into account when deciding the right order, he or she ought not to take into account what the plans for the child might be when making the factual decision as to whether threshold is met)

 

The first of these is interesting. It does seem to fly in the face of common sense – if a Court is deciding whether to make an order on the basis of future harm, surely they look at the facts as they present at the time of making the order? Well, yes and no.  That’s massively relevant when deciding whether to MAKE the order, but not at all relevant in deciding whether the threshold criteria were met at the time of issue.  The threshold issue is a purely factual analysis, and the welfare issue is balancing up all of the facts and deciding whether an order is proportionate, necessary and better for the child than making no order.

 

In bald terms – if a mother is misusing heroin before the baby is born, then that is a fact which can satisfy the threshold at the time of issue and meet the threshold criteria for making a final order. But the mother being abstinent for six months of the proceedings, having insight into the problems heroin caused her and working hard with support groups is a massive factor in whether an order is needed at all, and if so, what sort of order should be made.

 

(Think of threshold as being whether you get into a nightclub at all, and welfare as being the range of options available to you once you are in there – you can get drunk, dance, flirt with people, get into a quarrel, or leave having had an uneventful evening)

 

  1. On behalf of K’s guardian, Ms Porter argues that the judge was wrong to limit his consideration of the threshold to the mother’s direct behaviour towards K. Instead he should have looked at the wider context, as required by section 31. She next argues that he paid insufficient attention to the relevant date for consideration of the threshold, namely the time when protective action was taken. Lastly, he allowed the issues of threshold and welfare outcome to become entangled, repeatedly referring while considering the issue of threshold to the need for rigorous scrutiny of the option of what he described as “state-sponsored adoption”. These submissions are echoed by Ms Rahman for the local authority. In response, Ms Hibbard, who appeared below for the mother also, argues that the judge did not misdirect himself in any way. She points out that he gave reasons for disagreeing with the professional assessments of risk based upon the mother’s actual care for K.
  3. We are grateful for the clear and precise way in which the arguments have been presented. Having considered them, I am in no doubt that the judge’s decision that the threshold for the making of a public law order was not met in this case was wrong for the following reasons.
  5. Firstly, the case put by the local authority and the guardian was based on the whole of the history, which covered not only events during K’s short lifetime but all the evidence, including incontrovertible evidence concerning events that took place before she was born and while her mother was pregnant with her. By limiting his consideration to the way in which the mother had behaved with K, the judge excluded from his consideration the solid wall of evidence relating to the mother and father’s personal histories. Had he taken a full overview of the matter, it would have been overwhelmingly apparent that at the time proceedings were taken in November 2017, there was a likelihood of harm to K as a result of her being born to two very young and volatile parents. The professional evidence did not consist of expressions of “risks” and “concerns” with no basis in fact. Here the facts were plain, and the likelihood of harm arose from them. Those facts undoubtedly disclosed risks of significant harm that could not sensibly be ignored. In this case the threshold under section 31(2) of the Children Act 1989 was not only met, it was obviously met.
  7. Secondly, the judge misdirected himself by failing to focus on the relevant date of his assessment, namely whether, at the time when protective measures were put in place and using the statutory tense, K “is likely” to suffer significant harm. Instead he became distracted by the mother’s performance in the mother and baby foster placement. That evidence could only influence the assessment of whether the threshold had been crossed insofar as it might shed light on the significance of the evidence as it stood at the relevant date: see G (Children) [2001] EWCA Civ 968 at paragraph 23. Here, however, there was no suggestion that the later evidence cast new light on the earlier evidence in a way that lessened its significance, and that is certainly not how the judge approached the matter. Had he asked himself the right question – was the threshold satisfied at the date proceedings were issued? – there could only have been one answer.
  9. Thirdly, the judge entangled questions relating to the welfare outcome with the question of whether the threshold had been met. The judge’s role is to find the facts, apply the threshold test to them and, where appropriate, make welfare and proportionality evaluations. These are separate exercises, one leading to the next. It is quite possible to reason that the threshold has been crossed but that welfare does not require separation of parent and child. It is not possible to reason that, because the child and parent should not be separated, the threshold has not been crossed.
  11. For these reasons, if my Lord agrees, this appeal must be allowed to the extent that the judge’s finding that the threshold of likelihood of significant harm had not been crossed must be set aside

 

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You’ll find us all, doing the Lambeth Walk (oy!)

Posted on September 10, 2018 by suesspiciousminds

 

Gosh, it’s been ages.  Not been any juicy cases to write about, as the big beasts of the High Court are all on holiday, but this is an odd one.

 

It is a Court of Protection case, involving a woman who lacked capacity and whether she should be transported back to her home country of Colombia, interminable wrangling about the costs of transporting a wheelchair, a Court hearing where nobody shows up much to the Judge’s chagrin, and an eventual description of the approach of the public bodies as ‘verging on petulant’  with costs orders following.

London Borough of Lambeth v MCS & Anor [2018] EWCOP 14 (31 August 2018)    

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCOP/2018/14.html

 

  1. The documents do not reveal a clear picture, but it appears at least likely that P may have been ready for discharge in 2014; self evidently by the date of P’s assessment on 9 January 2017 P was clinically stable and ready for discharge. In fact I am certain that those conditions arose much, much earlier. It should be recalled that the original application to the Court (made by P’s RPR) was itself an application dated 20 December 2016, challenging P’s deprivation of liberty, pursuant to section 21A of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, made out of frustration because, despite the local authority and the Lambeth CCG supporting P’s wish and desire to return to Columbia, they had simply failed to progress it. “Support” has always been offered, and is still, but when something concrete had to be done, they have been found wanting. Even with the institution of proceedings, it has taken a year to achieve what should have been organised much, much earlier, and significantly, proceedings should have been, and were, unnecessary; all of this could and should have been achieved outside any application.

 

Bear in mind that this woman was ready for discharge in 2014 and the unit she was in was costing £2,000 per week, there ought to have been at the very least a financial incentive to move this along and get her back to Colombia where she wanted to be.   It has cost nearly a third of a million pounds to keep someone in a place where she didn’t want to be, when she could have gone back to her home country.

(Having been rebuked on Twitter during the World Cup for conflating Columbia – the city, with Colombia the country, I am spelling it correctly during this piece, although the judgment does not)

 

The Judge captures the human misery of this awful situation very well.

 

  1. There has never been any formal provision supporting P’s need for Spanish speaking staff, which at best has been provided on an ad hoc basis. P is distressed by receiving care from people who cannot speak Spanish, this has happened almost every day, several times a day, for over 3 years. It takes very little imagination to consider how additionally miserable and isolated she must have felt. Reports describe her as distressed, feeling like she is drowning, feeling scared, complaining of pain, each impacting severely on her everyday wellbeing.

 

  1. Having now had several hearings (in an application that itself was, or should have been, as I have said, unnecessary), I can only begin to imagine P’s sense of frustration and loss at being kept here for years against her wishes, and for no good reason. As even the proceedings have demonstrated so fully, the arrangements could and should have been established and implemented long ago, years ago, but because of disorganised, muddled and unfocused decision making, and what has at times verged on an arrogance, P has just had to wait. It should be remembered that P had been kept here against her wishes, at a cost to the taxpayer of over £2,000 per week. If the authority had done what it should have done in a timely professional manner, not only could they have saved themselves over £100,000 a year, and saved the cost to the taxpayer of these protracted High Court proceedings, they could have avoided P the years of misery from being kept a prisoner here, against her will.

 

Some of the hearings in this case were just a debacle

 

 

  1. At the hearing on 16 November 2017, very distinct progress towards repatriation had finally been achieved. Frustratingly, there were however, still significant details missing, not just an interim plan if there was a delay, but there was no detailed transition plan. I have seen some of the documents in relation to this and they are depressingly scant; frankly, they are unedifying. I entertained the hope, since the remaining matters seemed really very straightforward, that it might even have been possible to agree a draft order encompassing the transfer to Columbia and the deprivation of liberty involved in that move. Accordingly I felt able to make qualified declarations (including being transported to Columbia). But a detailed and realistic transfer plan was obviously still necessary. A proposed draft transfer schedule was provided for that hearing, but it was a poor document lacking any detail, proposing transfer on 20 December 2017.
  3. In view of the history, the shocking history, I made provision for a “long stop” hearing on 13 December 2017 whilst sitting on circuit (hoping still to retain the transfer date of 20 December 2017). I do not think I ever received a position statement from the applicants, who attended by new counsel, who had been inadequately instructed. No one from the applicants, CCG or solicitors had the courtesy to attend. To say this was unfortunate (leaving aside any other issues) is an understatement. No transfer plan had been filed, and important missing detail prevented any progress being achieved. No one appeared to be qualified to make what in some instances were trifling decisions involving a few hundred pounds, e.g. innumerable communications occurred over the provision of, cost of, source of, import duty on, or who should pay for the transport of a wheelchair so urgently required by P, far, far exceeding the cost of the chair itself. Information was given to the Court in relation to, for example, the air ambulance, which subsequently appeared to be wholly misleading and totally without foundation. The approach taken was unhelpful and, at times, verging on petulant. Despite my best efforts it appeared to reflect a deeper, most unfortunate perspective that has, from time to time, permeated these proceedings. In any event, as I say, no one had the courtesy to turn up, so nothing constructive could be achieved at all. Yet again the case was listed for hearing on 19 December 2017, making detailed and contingent directions.
  5. At that hearing, absolutely astonishingly, I was told that, whilst the CCG had approved funding for P’s flight to Columbia, it had arranged its meeting inter alia in relation to the cost of transporting the wheelchair and any import duty in Columbia (see above) for 20 December 2017, the following day – apparently those concerned were rather busy with other meetings. An additional issue concerned the provision for the cost of any care if P was taken ill on the flight; who would pay, was it possible to obtain insurance? The authority, in common with its actions before and since the institution of proceedings, conducted itself without regard to anything else, certainly not the welfare of P, and yet further evidence that the institution of proceedings had had no effect. They have had no regard to Court orders, or the involvement of the Court. This hearing occurred just a day short of the first anniversary of the issue of proceedings, and still the simple goal seemed a mile away.

 

Bear in mind that the unit was costing £2000 per week, and that the hold-up was the cost of flying a wheelchair that she needed out with her, this is just crazy.  Even if you paid for the wheelchair to go first class, that’s just 2-3 weeks of the unit. And as the Judge rightly noted, it would surely have been cheaper (even ignoring legal costs) to have just bought a wheelchair in Colombia and avoided the flight costs.

 

  1. Finally, on 15 January 2018, it was possible to approve a final order. Contrary to previous occasions when either no one attended, or those present had not obtained delegated financial responsibility, on this occasion, what should have occurred much, much earlier, probably years ago, was obtainable, and significant assurances and undertakings were forthcoming for the provision of care in the unlikely event P was taken ill in transit and required hospitalisation en route. All that should have occurred several months earlier and it is entirely symptomatic of the malaise which has beset these proceedings from the outset. For which P has been the unhappy victim, and the Applicant entirely responsible.
  3. P left the UK on 25 January 2018 by air ambulance. Her move is described thus:
    1. “The move went very well. There were no health concerns en route. P remained calm, restful and slept during the journey. The ambulance crew were extremely impressive and efficient. The doctor could speak Spanish. Upon arrival P “recognised many of her relatives and smiled all over her face.””

Finally, a happy ending to a tragic story.

  1. I set out a summary of these unhappy proceedings, not just because they should not have been necessary, but to highlight the very deeply frustrating and disorganised thinking, planning and management within the authority. As a result a vulnerable adult has been kept unnecessarily miserable against her will, confined in an environment for much longer than was necessary. In my best estimate, for 3 years.

 

 

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Mostyn J gets dissed by Court of Appeal despite not being the Judge in the case being appealed

Posted on July 26, 2018 by suesspiciousminds

 

Re A Children 2018

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2018/1718.html

Long-time readers will have been enjoying the regular frank exchange of views and pleasantries between Mostyn J and the Court of Appeal, but this is a new one.  The Court of Appeal in this case overturned a Judge who had been following Mostyn J’s guidance in a High Court case and therefore had the opportunity to say that Mostyn J was wrong as a sideswipe.

 

Did they resist this?

Reader, they did not.

 

  1. In A County Council v M & F, upon which the judge relied, Mostyn J having set out passages from Re B (and Baroness Hale’s confirmation of Re B found in Re S-B [2010] 1 All ER 705, SC,) went on:
    1. “16. Thus the law sets a simple probability standard of 51/49, but the more serious or improbable the allegation the greater the need, generally speaking, for evidential “cogency”. In AA v NA and Others [2010] 2 FLR 1173, FD, I attempted to summarise these principles at para 24:

17. Thus, it is clear that in all civil proceedings P cannot be set higher than a scintilla above 0.5. The various judicial statements that a more serious charge requires more clear evidence is not an elevation of P > 0.5. The requirement of evidential clarity is quite distinct from an elevation of the probability standard. Were it otherwise, and, say, an allegation of rape or murder of a child made in civil proceedings required P to be set at > 0.6 then one could end up in the position where a court considered that P in such a case was, say 0.51 but still had to find that it did not happen; when, as a matter of probability, is was more likely that not that it did. This would be absurd and perverse. P must always be set at > 0.5 in civil proceedings, but subject to the proviso that the more serious the allegation so the evidence must be clearer.”

  1. With the greatest respect to the erudition of Mostyn J’s arithmetical approach to the application of the ‘simple balance of probabilities’, I do not agree that it represents the appropriate approach, and it seems to me that this passage had, in part, led the judge to decide that, in order to determine whether the local authority had discharged the burden of proof to the necessary standard, he had to adopt the same approach. As a consequence, the judge mistakenly attached a percentage to each of the possibilities and thereafter, added together the percentages which he attributed to an innocent explanation and before concluding that, only if the resulting sum was 49% or less, could the court make a finding of inflicted injury

 

Perhaps envisaging a ‘says who?’ response to their very polite (if you are not a lawyer) ground and pound of Mostyn J, the Court of Appeal pre-empt this

 

  1. In A County Council v M & F Mostyn J had drawn on the shipping case of The Popi M ( Rhesa Shipping Co.S.A. v Edmunds, Rhesa Shipping Co.SA v Fenton Insurance Co Ltd) [1985] 1 WLR 948 HL,(Popi M) as an example of ” the burden of proof coming to the rescue”[18]. Lord Brandon, in his celebrated passage in Popi M, in declining to apply the dictum of Sherlock Holmes to the effect that “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth” said:
    1. “The first reason is one which I have already sought to emphasise as being of great importance, namely, that the judge is not bound always to make a finding one way or the other with regard to the facts averred by the parties. He has open to him the third alternative of saying that the party on whom the burden of proof lies in relation to any averment made by him has failed to discharge that burden. No judge likes to decide cases on burden of proof if he can legitimately avoid having to do so. There are cases, however, in which, owing to the unsatisfactory state of the evidence or otherwise, deciding on the burden of proof is the only just course for him to take.

The second reason is that the dictum can only apply when all relevant facts are known, so that all possible explanations, except a single extremely improbable one, can properly be eliminated

  1. Recently (and after A County Council v M&F), in Nulty Deceased v Milton Keynes Borough Council [2013] EWCA Civ 15, [2013] 1 WLR 1183 Lord Justice Toulson (as he then was) considered the use of an arithmetical approach to the standard of proof. Having first considered Popi M he went on:
    1. “33. Lord Brandon concluded, at 957, that the judge ought to have found simply that the ship owners’ case was not proved.

34. A case based on circumstantial evidence depends for its cogency on the combination of relevant circumstances and the likelihood or unlikelihood of coincidence. A party advancing it argues that the circumstances can only or most probably be accounted for by the explanation which it suggests. Consideration of such a case necessarily involves looking at the whole picture, including what gaps there are in the evidence, whether the individual factors relied upon are in themselves properly established, what factors may point away from the suggested explanation and what other explanation might fit the circumstances. As Lord Mance observed in Datec Electronics Holdings Limited v UPS limited [2007] UKHL 23, [2007] 1 WLR 1325, at 48 and 50, there is an inherent risk that a systematic consideration of the possibilities could become a process of elimination “leading to no more than a conclusion regarding the least unlikely cause of loss”, which was the fault identified in The Popi M. So at the end of any such systematic analysis, the court has to stand back and ask itself the ultimate question whether it is satisfied that the suggested explanation is more likely than not to be true. The elimination of other possibilities as more implausible may well lead to that conclusion, but that will be a conclusion of fact: there is no rule of law that it must do so. I do not read any of the statements in any of the other authorities to which we were referred as intending to suggest otherwise.

35. The civil “balance of probability” test means no less and no more than that the court must be satisfied on rational and objective grounds that the case for believing that the suggested means of causation occurred is stronger than the case for not so believing. In the USA the usual formulation of this standard is a “preponderance of the evidence”. In the British Commonwealth the generally favoured term is a “balance of probability”. They mean the same. Sometimes the “balance of probability” standard is expressed mathematically as “50 + % probability”, but this can carry with it a danger of pseudo-mathematics, as the argument in this case demonstrated. When judging whether a case for believing that an event was caused in a particular way is stronger than the case for not so believing, the process is not scientific (although it may obviously include evaluation of scientific evidence) and to express the probability of some event having happened in percentage terms is illusory.

36. Mr Rigney submitted that balance of probability means a probability greater than 50%. If there is a closed list of possibilities, and if one possibility is more likely than the other, by definition that has a greater probability than 50%. If there is a closed list of more than two possibilities, the court should ascribe a probability factor to them individually in order to determine whether one had a probability figure greater than 50%.

37. I would reject that approach. It is not only over-formulaic but it is intrinsically unsound. The chances of something happening in the future may be expressed in terms of percentage. Epidemiological evidence may enable doctors to say that on average smokers increase their risk of lung cancer by X%. But you cannot properly say that there is a 25 per cent chance that something has happened: Hotson v East Berkshire Health Authority [1987] AC 750. Either it has or it has not. In deciding a question of past fact the court will, of course, give the answer which it believes is more likely to be (more probably) the right answer than the wrong answer, but it arrives at its conclusion by considering on an overall assessment of the evidence (i.e. on a preponderance of the evidence) whether the case for believing that the suggested event happened is more compelling than the case for not reaching that belief (which is not necessarily the same as believing positively that it did not happen)”.

  1. I accept that there may occasionally be cases where, at the conclusion of the evidence and submissions, the court will ultimately say that the local authority has not discharged the burden of proof to the requisite standard and thus decline to make the findings. That this is the case goes hand in hand with the well-established law that suspicion, or even strong suspicion, is not enough to discharge the burden of proof. The court must look at each possibility, both individually and together, factoring in all the evidence available including the medical evidence before deciding whether the “fact in issue more probably occurred than not” (Re B: Lord Hoffman).
  3. In my judgment what one draws from Popi M and Nulty Deceased is that:
  5. i) Judges will decide a case on the burden of proof alone only when driven to it and where no other course is open to him given the unsatisfactory state of the evidence.

ii) Consideration of such a case necessarily involves looking at the whole picture, including what gaps there are in the evidence, whether the individual factors relied upon are in themselves properly established, what factors may point away from the suggested explanation and what other explanation might fit the circumstances.

iii) The court arrives at its conclusion by considering whether on an overall assessment of the evidence (i.e. on a preponderance of the evidence) the case for believing that the suggested event happened is more compelling than the case for not reaching that belief (which is not necessarily the same as believing positively that it did not happen) and not by reference to percentage possibilities or probabilities.

  1. In my judgment the judge fell into error, not only by the use of a “pseudo- mathematical” approach to the burden of proof, but in any event, he allowed the ‘burden of proof to come to [his] rescue’ prematurely.

 

I’m sure that Mostyn J is delighted by the dismissal of his P>0.5 formulation as ‘pseudo-mathematical’

 

The case they were talking about is one I wrote about here

 

A County Council v M and F 2011

 

but for my part, the more troubling one, where the mathematics (or pseudo-mathematics) applied to the balance of probabilities directly affect the outcome is here  (three years later, building on Re M and F  and building on the Popi shipping law case but overlooking the Nulty civil negligence about a fire and electrical engineering  law case)

 

Mostyn-tacious – a judgment that makes your temples throb

 

Anyway, the soup and nuts of both of them is that Mostyn J looked at a variety of explanations, malign and benign for incident X and then ascribed percentages to them, and saying whilst the malign explanation might be more likely than not than any individual benign explanation, he was instead totalling up the chance he had ascribed to each of the benign explanations and deciding that he could not say that the chance of malign explanation was higher than all of the possible benign explanations added together.  So what he was doing was saying  ‘There are 3 explanations. I think that the most likely of those three is that mother did this.  But if I ascribe percentage possibilities to each option, I might still decide that the two alternative explanations add up to more than 50%, so I’m not able to say that mother did this’

 

Anyway, the Court of Appeal say that the Court should not get into such esoteric exercises and simply say that on the balance of probabilities what do they say is the more likely than not explanation for event X.  Which is good news for anyone who doesn’t want to take a course in probability theory.

 

This case is desperately sad, even by care proceedings standards  – a ten year old girl is found dead. The police assume accidental strangulation by falling off a bunk and getting trapped in decorative netting. Poppi Worthington style errors are made in the investigation, and then evidence comes to light suggesting that the ten year old had been sexually assaulted (there is talk of DNA being present in intimate areas) and concerns then arise that the ten year old either hung herself intentionally or was killed  (deliberately or unintentionally as part of choking).  That obviously had massive implications for the other five children of the family.

At final hearing, the Judge concluded that the evidence that the girl was sexually assaulted was made out, but he could not say who perpetrated the assault  (there’s some odd wording about why the LA were refused their request to call the police officer who analysed the DNA samples) and whether it might be member of extended family or an intruder.  The Judge found that despite some conflicting expert evidence about causation of the death  (the medical research is that accidental strangulation happens rarely and to much much younger children) he was not able to make a finding that the malign explanation outweighed each of the possible benign explanations. Threshold was not met, the other five children went home.

The Court of Appeal concluded that

 

  1. In my judgment the judge fell into error, not only by the use of a “pseudo- mathematical” approach to the burden of proof, but in any event, he allowed the ‘burden of proof to come to [his] rescue’ prematurely.
  3. In my judgment the judge had failed to look at the whole picture. Not only did he fail to marry up the fact that S sustained two sets of injuries (one of which was fatal) but the judge, faced with the incontrovertible evidence in relation to the genital injuries, carried out no analysis of the available evidence in order to see whether an accident (for example) was a likely cause. Whilst in other circumstances I might have identified, or highlighted by way of example, certain evidence which I believe merited consideration by the judge, given my view that the appeal must be allowed and the matter remitted for rehearing, it would not be appropriate for me to comment further.
  5. Only if, having carried out such a comprehensive review of the evidence, a judge remains unable to make findings of fact as to causation, can he or she be thrown onto the burden of proof as the determinative element.
  7. In my judgment, in this most difficult of cases and in the most trying of circumstances, the judge failed to carry out such an analysis before relying on the burden of proof. This, when coupled with the erroneous conclusions of the judge in respect of the genital injuries and his failure to give those injuries any weight when considering whether S died as a consequence of an inflicted injury, must, in my judgment, lead to the appeal being allowed and the order set aside.
  9. I have considered with a deal of anxiety whether the case should be remitted given the lapse of time and that the family are reunited. I have however come to the unequivocal conclusion that it must. If S was killed other than by accident or suicide, it happened in that household and no one has any idea how or in what circumstances it came about. This is not a case, tragic and serious though that would be, where a child may have been shaken in an understandable momentary loss of self-control by an exhausted parent. This was a 10 year old child, and if it was the case that her death was caused by some unknown person strangling her with a ligature, the risk and child protection issues in respect of her surviving sister and brothers cannot be over stated. Traumatic though a fresh trial would be, it cannot be viewed as other than a proportionate outcome if, as they say is their intention, the local authority pursues the case.

 

That’s obviously a dreadful state of affairs either way.  Either something awful and malicious happened to this ten year old, in which case children were wrongly returned to the care of the parents  OR it didn’t, and having secured the return of their five surviving children having been under awful suspicion the parents have to go through it all again.  That’s unbearable however it turns out.

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Police disclosure and the LA role in care proceedings

Posted on July 24, 2018 by suesspiciousminds

 

This is a case where the High Court were looking into what had caused the death of X, an 8 day old baby, and what that might mean for where Z her 22 month old sister would live. Understandably, there was a police investigation into the death of X running in tandem to the care proceedings, and the police had a lot of material within their possession. Various court orders were made for the disclosure of police material, which ended up coming into the possession of the parties to the care proceedings in dribs and drabs, and every batch of documentation alerted them to the presence of more material.

 

I’m afraid that if you are a Local Authority lawyer, this case is about to place a lot of additional responsibilities on you. Sorry for that. You may want to nip out and buy a packet of chocolate Hobnobs to nibble on during the post, because you will need some comfort and calories.

 

  1. The fact-finding hearing was beset by problems arising from the late disclosure of material held by Lancashire Constabulary [“the police”]. It was not evident until day five of the hearing that the police held material of potential relevance to the issues I had to determine. With the assistance of counsel and the officers assigned to the investigation into X’s death, the court was provided by day nine of the hearing with an additional 900 pages of material. The hearing itself was significantly extended by both the process of disclosure undertaken at court and by the need to allow counsel time to digest and take instructions on this material.
  3. It will be obvious that the non-disclosure by the police of potentially relevant material could have both prejudiced the right of X’s parents to a fair hearing and deprived the court of information which might have shed light on what happened to X whilst in the care of her parents. That this could have happened in a case of such seriousness was bad enough but, in this case, the potential unfairness was magnified by the vulnerability of X’s mother who had been assessed as requiring the assistance of an intermediary throughout the hearing. Had it not been for the diligence of counsel and the time I allowed for instructions to be taken, the entire hearing might have been fundamentally compromised on fairness grounds.

 

This judgment, of Knowles J, considered the representations made by the Local Authority and the police about how this had emerged and what could be learned for the future.  I think its a beautiful judgment, and it captures a lot of important issues.

 

 

Lancashire County Council v A, B and Z (A Child : Fact Finding Hearing: Police Disclosure) [2018] EWHC 1819 (Fam) (02 July 2018)    

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2018/1819.html

 

 

For example, this is the best summary of the fundamental problem in police disclosure that I’ve seen

 

Simply put, disclosure is requested by those who don’t know what there is from those who don’t know what is needed. Thus, the parties to family proceedings don’t know what material is held by the police and so draft orders as widely as possible, imposing a significant burden on police disclosure officers. Conversely, the police have a poor understanding of the wide evidential canvas upon which the family court makes decisions and inevitably view the question of relevance through the narrow prism of criminal proceedings. In good faith the police provide what they think the family court needs but the reality is that they are ill placed to judge.

 

 

EXACTLY !

 

 

And that’s why we end up with orders asking for ALL MATERIAL held by the police, and why the system grinds to a halt. We don’t know what they HAVE, and they don’t know what we WANT

 

There are some other good judicial remarks about the role of the Local Authority in care proceedings, and I think these are really important, and it is helpful to have them all set out in one place.

 

As is required of crown prosecutors in criminal proceedings, local authorities must ensure that the law is properly applied; that relevant evidence is put before the court; and that the obligations of disclosure are complied with. Like crown prosecutors, the local authority must be fair, independent and objective and should always act in the interests of justice and not solely for the purpose of obtaining the order it may seek in public law proceedings. If it be thought that all the local authority requires from the police is material that will assist its case, that would represent a profound misunderstanding of the local authority’s duties to the court.

 

In the Court process, the Local Authority aren’t able to approach the case simply in terms of ‘winning it’, they have the duty to play fair as well.  I’m sure that this will attract comment, but it has always been my understanding that this is what a Local Authority has to do, and perhaps it was overdue a reminder.

 

The Judge notes at the outset that there is no cost-neutral way of solving these problems, and if you don’t already know that in such a scenario this cost burden is about to fall on the Local Authority then I wish I had your innocence.

 

  1. The other reason the existence of undisclosed material might not have been apparent is that the necessary forensic analysis of what had been disclosed was not carried out by the parties to these proceedings prior to the start of the fact-finding hearing. This might have made apparent some of the omissions in disclosure which emerged at the hearing itself. The current arrangements for public funding do not encourage advocates in the family justice system, who are often under considerable pressure, to analyse vast swathes of material in advance, for example, of a directions hearing. They simply do not get paid to do so. It is regrettably often only when the actual hearing is being prepared that anomalies in disclosure become obvious. To their credit, Miss Taylor QC and Mr Rothery both conceded that some of the evidential anomalies in this case would have been apparent from a close reading of the evidence as and when it was disclosed by the police.
  3. There is no simple cost-neutral solution to these problems. However, the applicant in public law proceedings – the local authority – must prove its case and, in so doing, must be alive to the strengths and weaknesses of all the evidence before the court. I regard that statement as supportive of the dicta of Ryder LJ in paragraph 36 of Re W (Care Proceedings: Functions of the court and the local authority) [2013] EWCA Civ 1227 namely, that proceedings under the Children Act 1989 are quasi inquisitorial in that the judge has to decide both whether threshold is crossed and the basis upon which that is so, whether or not the local authority or any other party agrees. It seems to me obvious that a local authority, with the greater resources available to it, will bear the lion’s share of the burden of assisting the court to determine not only its application but also any other pertinent issues in a case. It does so by ensuring that the evidence – from whatever source – is complete and in order and it takes the lead in ensuring that case management directions have been complied with. For a local authority to act in that impartial manner in public law proceedings is to facilitate the court’s quasi inquisitorial role in a process which is fair to all parties. In saying this, I make it plain that the other parties to proceedings are not absolved from their duties to cooperate with the court and comply with the court’s directions. Rather, the onus on the local authority, as the state agent in care proceedings, to conduct itself fairly and to assist the court is necessarily greater.
  5. None of the above is novel. As is required of crown prosecutors in criminal proceedings, local authorities must ensure that the law is properly applied; that relevant evidence is put before the court; and that the obligations of disclosure are complied with. Like crown prosecutors, the local authority must be fair, independent and objective and should always act in the interests of justice and not solely for the purpose of obtaining the order it may seek in public law proceedings. If it be thought that all the local authority requires from the police is material that will assist its case, that would represent a profound misunderstanding of the local authority’s duties to the court.
  7. To place these observations in context, the case law relating to the disclosure of local authority records in care proceedings has long emphasised the duties of local authorities to be open in the disclosure of all relevant material in their possession. The analysis of the relevant case law by Munby LJ (as he then was) in Durham County Council v Dunn [2012] EWCA Civ 1654 traces the judicial formulation and refinement of those duties [see paragraphs 37-43 in particular]. It bears repetition in the light of the observations I have made about the duty of a local authority to take an active role in preparing a case for determination by the court. What follows draws on Munby LJ’s analysis in the Durham case.
  9. In November 1989, the Court of Appeal had to consider the disclosure of local authority records in the context of care proceedings where allegations of sexual abuse were being made against a parent [R v Hampshire County Council ex parte K and Another [1990] 1 FLR 330]. The interest of the child was emphasised [page 336]:
  11. “… as part and parcel of its general welfare, not only in having its own voice sympathetically heard and its own needs sensitively considered but also in ensuring that its parents are given every proper opportunity of having the evidence fairly tested and preparing themselves in advance to meet the grave charges against them…”

The Court went on to state in the clearest of terms what the local authority’s duties were:

“…Local authorities therefore have a high duty in law, not only on grounds of general fairness but also in the direct interest of a child whose welfare they serve, to be open in the disclosure of all relevant material affecting that child in their possession or power (excluding documents protected on established grounds of public interest immunity) which may be of assistance to the natural parent or parents in rebutting charges against one or both of them of in any way ill-treating the child”.

The practical application of that duty was explained by Cazalet J in Re C (Expert Evidence: Disclosure: Practice) [1995] 1 FLR 204 (FD) held at 209-G-210A as follows:

“In R v Hampshire County Council ex parte K and Another [1990] 1 FLR 330 it was held that a local authority who brought care proceedings has a duty to disclose all relevant information in its possession or power which might assist parents to rebut allegations being made against them, save for that which is protected by public interest immunity…

… In my view it is the responsibility of the local authority actively to consider what documents it has in its possession which are or may be relevant to the issues as they affect the child, its family and any other person who is relevant in regard to an allegation of significant harm, and to the care and upbringing of the child in the context of the welfare checklist issues. The local authority should not content itself with disclosing the documents which support its case but must consider itself under a duty to disclose in the interests of the child and of justice documents which may modify or cast doubt on its case. The particular concern should relate to those documents which actually help the case of an opposing party. If there is any doubt about whether the information is relevant, consideration should be given to notifying the affected parties of the existence of the material. Whilst the temptation to invite costly, intrusive and pointless fishing expeditions should be avoided, there should be a presumption in favour of disclosure of potentially helpful information. If documents are obviously relevant and not protected from disclosure by public interest immunity, then the local authority should initiate disclosure.”

  1. Those duties have been underscored by the Strasbourg jurisprudence. In McMichael v United Kingdom (1995) 20 EHRR 205, the court was concerned with care proceedings in which social services and medical reports had been given to the court but not disclosed to the parents though the contents were made known to them. The court held that there had been violations of both Article 6 and Article 8, and in paragraph 80 held that the lack of disclosure of such vital documents was capable of affecting the ability of the parents not only to influence the outcome of the proceedings but also to pursue an appeal. Indeed, Article 8 imposes positive obligations of disclosure on a local authority involved in care proceedings. In TP and KM v United Kingdom [2001] 2 FLR 549 [paragraph 82] the court said:
  3. “The positive obligation of the Contracting State to protect the interests of the family requires that this material be made available to the parent concerned, even in the absence of any request by a parent. If there were doubts as to whether this posed a risk to the welfare of the child, the matter should have been submitted to the court by the local authority at the earliest stage in the proceedings possible for it to resolve the issues involved.”

Together with the dicta of Munby J (as he then was) in paragraphs 140-151 of Re L (Care: Assessment: Fair Trial) [2002 EWHC 1379 (Fam), [2002] 2 FLR 730, the principles of fairness embedded in the case law relating to the disclosure of records are directly relevant to the positive duties and responsibilities of local authorities I have outlined in paragraphs 40 and 41 above. There is nothing startling or new about any of this.

  1. All the above requires, in my view, that a local authority should take responsibility for ensuring that disclosure provided by the police in proceedings such as these is complete. Anomalies in the disclosure should be brought to the court’s attention as soon as possible. To do this properly takes time and time taken has a financial cost. That cannot be avoided given the seriousness of what is at stake for the children and the adults involved in these proceedings. I, like all of those involved in the family justice system, am acutely aware of the financial pressures on local authorities, but I venture to suggest that time taken to resolve any issues about police disclosure prior to the start of the hearing is likely to save local authorities time and ultimately money.

 

 

Para 45 immediately above is where the bus gets firmly parked in the LA parking space.

 

There you go – it is the duty of the LA to ensure that the police disclosure is full and complete and that material which assists the parents is included within it.

 

para 40   It seems to me obvious that a local authority, with the greater resources available to it, will bear the lion’s share of the burden of assisting the court to determine not only its application but also any other pertinent issues in a case. It does so by ensuring that the evidence – from whatever source – is complete and in order and it takes the lead in ensuring that case management directions have been complied with. For a local authority to act in that impartial manner in public law proceedings is to facilitate the court’s quasi inquisitorial role in a process which is fair to all parties

 

Reading all of those passages, I think it would be a risk for a Local Authority lawyer to assume that police disclosure will be mopped up by Counsel instructed for final hearing. There needs to be an analysis of the disclosure BEFORE that.

The Judge makes a practical proposal for all LA lawyers (and being one, I truly am sorry for ruining your day if you are one too)

 

  1. First, I repeat what I said in paragraphs 33 and 34. It would be advisable if all the police forces in England and Wales checked their own data management systems immediately to ensure that the problem evident in this case is not present in their own organisation. Local authority lawyers should also check with their local police force which data management system is being used to record and collate information any case where disclosure into family proceedings is required and to confirm that the disclosure team in that force has access to the relevant system.

 

Yuck….

 

I like the suggestions regarding the order though.

 

  1. I make the following suggestions by reference to paragraph 110 of the judgment of Francis J in the London Borough of Southwark case [see paragraph 5 above] in which he made a number of suggestions to assist parties in family proceedings where it appeared that the police were not cooperating with their disclosure obligations. Paragraph 110 reads as follows:
  3. “(i) The local authority will make a protocol request to the police at least 14 days prior to the issue of s.31 proceedings. In cases where the issue of s.31 proceedings is immediately preceded by an application for an emergency protection order or the s.31 proceedings are listed upon short notice, the protocol request shall be made upon issue of the s.31 proceedings.

(ii) Not later than seven days prior to the case management hearing, the local authority will issue an application for disclosure against the relevant police authority. The local authority will invite the court to list the application for disclosure on the same day as the case management hearing. The local authority will serve a copy of the application upon the police at least seven days prior to the case management hearing. The senior investigating police officer in the case should be invited to attend the case management hearing and be legally represented.

(iii) In the event that the police wish to withhold any disclosure from the parties, any application should be made by them not less than two days prior to the case management hearing. The application should set out clearly the reasons why disclosure is being opposed and why a redacted version cannot be provided.

(iv) Upon receipt of a protocol request or an application for disclosure, the police will provide a list or schedule of all the evidence and material they have within their possession that is relevant to the central issues in the Family Court case. This list shall address the following:

a) A short description of the evidence/material;

b) Whether the police agree to disclose that particular piece of evidence or material to the parties; and

c) In the event the police oppose disclosure of a particular piece of evidence or material clear reasons must be provided.

(v) At the case management hearing the police will provide the court with the following:

(a) details of any offences;

(b) whether any suspect(s) have been charged or not;

(c) custody status of any defendants;

(d) what bail conditions are applicable;

(e) any criminal court timescales.

(vi) In the event that the police seek to oppose disclosure on the basis that they consider the evidence to be irrelevant to the family proceedings the police will provide a copy of the documents to the court for the court to determine whether or not the evidence is relevant to the family proceedings.

(vii) The local authority will, throughout the course of the family proceedings, continue to liaise with the police as to whether any new evidence is obtained following the case management hearing. The local authority will update the parties and the court on a regular basis as to the outcomes of their liaison with the police.

(viii) Prior to any fact-finding hearing and/or final hearing the police will confirm which, if any, new evidence has been secured following the case management hearing and provide a further list or schedule addressing the issues set out above.

(ix) If the police object to any new evidence or material being disclosed the police must make a PII application as soon as practicable and, in any event, within seven days of that objection.

(x) The recording of any directions made in connection with police disclosure on case management orders should be sufficiently clear so as to enable the reader to have the ability to understand the key decision-making timetable in connection with this issue and the pro forma disclosure order contained within the protocol should be used.

(xi) It shall be the responsibility of the police and local authority to ensure that the police evidence is either disclosed to the other parties or that the court has the opportunity to determine any issue as to its relevance and/or PII application, sufficiently in advance of any fixture so as to enable the fact-finding or main hearing to proceed effectively.”

 

 

Knowles J gives some further guidance

 

  1. An additional step which should take place 5 days prior to any IRH or directions hearing before a fact-finding hearing is for a meeting to take place between the local authority solicitor (with preferably the advocate conducting the local authority’s case) and the police disclosure team. The purpose of that meeting should be to check that the police disclosure is complete and to provide an update to the family court as to the progress of the criminal investigation and the prospect of charge and/or criminal trial. It is not primarily a meeting to provide to the police information about the family proceedings and I suggest that the parties must agree prior to this meeting what the police are to know about the family proceedings. This meeting should be authorised by the court as part of the directions at the case management hearing. If that meeting is unnecessary because full police disclosure has taken place, it can be cancelled with the agreement of the other parties to the proceedings. The meeting should be recorded in the interests of transparency.
  3. Ideally, such a meeting should involve all the parties to the proceedings, but I recognise that those advocates who are publicly funded will be unable to claim payment to attend. In those circumstances, the safeguards I have proposed – such as agreement as to what can be said to the police about the family proceedings and recording the meeting so as not to compromise the advocates acting for the local authority – should be adequate to ensure that the process of police disclosure remains fair and transparent. It follows that, in preparing for this meeting, the local authority should be mindful of its duties to ensure that full disclosure of relevant material takes place even if it considers that a particular piece of evidence requested on behalf of a parent is of little evidential value. It should come to the meeting having read and considered what has already been disclosed and having identified any anomalies or problems in the police disclosure.
  5. At the IRH or directions hearing before a fact-finding hearing, the police – via the suitable senior officer – should provide to the court a signed declaration that the court’s order for disclosure has been complied with.

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Extension of the proceedings for 6 months

Posted on July 19, 2018 by suesspiciousminds

 

I have to say that when I first read Re P (A child) 2018  I thought it was of limited interest and value and incredibly fact-specific, but I am aware that this is not how it is being viewed by some, and therefore felt it might warrant a blog post.

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2018/1483.html

 

This is a Court of Appeal decision from an original decision from Her Honour Judge Probyn (who used to sit in my local area, and whom I like)

 

At the time of the final hearing, the child was 7 months old.  There were two older children who had been removed as a result of mother’s alcoholism and findings that the mother had told significant lies during those proceedings.

 

The mother, who had been a long-standing alcoholic, was seeking an extension of the proceedings for six months.  HHJ Probyn refused that and made a Placement Order,  mother appealed.  It is a very unusual set of facts, in that by the time of the final hearing, the mother had been abstinent for 13 months  (i.e she had got dry when she learned of the pregnancy and was still dry at the time of the final hearing.  The expert in the case had spoken about having a reasonable degree of confidence that abstinence could endure after an 18 month period (which is not that uncommon, and hence why mother was seeking a further 6 months to show that she could continue to maintain abstinence)

 

My immediate ball-park feeling is that the right outcome in the care proceedings would have been to make a Supervision Order, with further testing, and the case to be brought back to Court if mother relapsed, rather than continue with ICOs for a further 6 months.  I can’t think of a case I’ve ever had where a parent had 13 months of abstinence where a plan of adoption would have been granted.

 

(Hence my original view that the case was so fact-specific that it would be of no wider value)

 

By the time the appeal was heard, the 6 months had passed (of course) and mother had maintained her abstinence, so the appeal was always likely to succeed (and appealing on ‘give me more time’ became rather nugatory).

In terms of the adjournment

  1. For the purposes of considering whether or not the mother could make the necessary changes within the child’s timescale, the period in question is a delay of six months in relation to a baby of seven months of age.
  3. The courts are often faced with cases where the judge is told that some sort of therapy may result in a mother being able to parent her child, which therapy has not yet begun and will take an indeterminate period, often 18 months to 3 years. I accept that in such a case a plea for ‘more time’ by a mother serves no purpose but to put off the inevitable, to the detriment of the child in question.
  5. This court was faced with a very different situation. Not only had the mother been abstinent for 13 months but, in contrast to her earlier period of abstinence, she was, even on the local authority’s own case, now energetically cooperating with the follow-up. More importantly, there was an a new, and genuine, acceptance by her and insight on her part into both her alcoholism and its impact upon her child’s welfare.
  7. This proposed adjournment therefore not only tests out the mother’s ability to remain sober for the further six months, but also to judge her continued commitment to AA and the specialist rehabilitation service and to see whether the personality stability which had come with sobriety would be maintained. Most importantly from the local authority’s point of view, the adjournment would give the local authority and Dr Hallstrom an opportunity to see if the developing insight shown by the mother was capable of developing into an honest working relationship with the local authority such that, in the event that the mother has a “setback”, (which is by no means to be ruled out) she could be trusted to seek help in the interests of L.
  9. In my judgment there was a clear purpose in the adjournment, namely whether, within L’s reasonable timescales, the mother could capitalise on the considerable progress she had made such as to allow L to live with her mother. The outcome at the end of a further six months was not as the judge believed, inevitable and I am satisfied that, on the evidence before the court, there was a sufficient prospect of the court being in a position to decide that L could be safely placed with her mother to justify the adjournment.

 

The Court of Appeal considered that given the progress mother had made, a Placement Order was not the right order.

 

  1. That therefore leaves the question (Question 3) as to whether there was a “solid” evidence based reason to believe that the parent would be able to make the necessary changes within L’s timescale. It goes without saying that one “necessary change” would be the ability of the mother to satisfy the court that the combination of sobriety and further insight would allow the court to be satisfied that the risk to L, in the event that the mother has a relapse is manageable, and that the mother would be honest with the local authority and in such circumstances seek help at the earliest possible opportunity. In my judgment there is indeed ‘some solid evidence based reason to believe that the mother will be able to make the necessary changes within the child’s time scale”.
  1. In my judgment, had the judge, even in a couple of paragraphs, once she had rejected the application for an adjournment, gone on to consider all circumstances of the case by reference to the law in relation to placement orders that she had so carefully set out earlier in her judgment, she may well have hesitated again before concluding that L’s welfare “required” the severing of her relationship with her mother without more ado.
  3. I for my part, whilst fully accepting the legitimate concerns and doubts expressed by the local authority and the Children’s Guardian, cannot see how at that stage, L’s welfare required the breaking off of all L’s ties to her mother and full sister and in my judgment, the making of a placement order was a disproportionate outcome in all the circumstances of the case.

 

The wider point is made by the Court of Appeal at the end, being critical that the LA went ahead and reduced contact from four times per week to once per month and ended their support and assessment – the Court of Appeal suggest that once permission to appeal had been granted, the LA would have been wiser to have been active in the case and engaged with the mother.

 

  1. In conclusion, I note that by the time the appeal came on last week, the six month period sought by the mother had been and gone. The mother has remained sober throughout. The local authority, as already noted, has provided no support to the mother in the interim period and more particularly has not carried out any form of updating assessment of her because, Ms Connell told the court, their case remains that the mother cannot be trusted to be open and honest and the risk to L in the event of a relapse is therefore too great to allow them to reconsider their position, even now. They have, they said, shown good faith in reducing contact from four times a week to once a week rather than once a month which had been their original plan pending placement.
  3. I hope that the local authority may, on reflection, regret that approach and on reviewing the case conclude that in the interests of L, once Moylan LJ had granted permission to appeal, the better way would have been once again to have become active in the case, and to have engaged with the mother in order to see whether, their worst fears about the mother continued to be justified such that in the best interests of L the last resort of adoption remained the only option.

 

 

Now, I shall come to the passages which are attracting some attention beyond the very fact-specific elements of this case. It is obviously unusual to seek a 6 month extension to care proceedings, particularly post the Children and Families Act 2014   (I still think making a Supervision Order was the right approach, rather than adjourning for 6 months), but there are passages here dealing with that, and which some might suggest have broad applicabililty.   (I think not, but we shall watch and see)

 

  1. It is undoubtedly the case that all this was very recent, but it is important to note that the judge did not find that the mother was simply saying what the judge wanted to hear. The judge [107] accepted that the mother was showing insight and that there were ‘green shoots’. One can quite see that had the only options facing the judge been immediate rehabilitation or a placement order, then she may well have been driven to conclude that it was too little too late. It is however hard to see how, given that sobriety and honesty are inevitably intrinsically woven in together, a period of six months would have done other than to allow the local authority and Dr Hallstrom not only to see if she remained sober, but also whether the “green shoots “and developing insight could now lead to the sort of working relationship, co-operation, and therefore trust, that the local authority rightly regard as essential if the risk of a future relapse is properly to be managed.
  3. In my judgment the appellant is correct in her submission that whilst the history is of considerable importance, too much emphasis was placed on the historic lies to the extent that the judge seemed to regard this feature alone as determinative of the case. There was, as a consequence, a failure properly to set those undoubted and serious concerns against the genuine and significant progress made by the mother. If this progress was maintained the mother’s likely future level of honesty could be assessed in the context of sobriety and with a developing understanding and insight as against her historic drunkenness and lack of insight.
  5. Similarly in [111] the judge factored in, without more:
  7. (i) the “risk of serious emotional and physical harm to L,” but the risk of emotional and physical harm would only arise in the event that L was rehabilitated to the mother. It was therefore not a factor at this stage, namely the consideration of the application to adjourn, but would become important only at final care order and placement order stage.

(ii) the “risk of further damage to her attachment needs” The evidence in relation to attachment is recorded by the judge in her judgment at [91] namely that:

“…L is a baby of some six months and who over the coming months will be at a crucial stage in terms of her attachment development”

  1. Contrary to the judge’s judgment, there was no evidence that L had suffered attachment damage. On the contrary, the Children’s Guardian had observed L to be well attached to the foster carer and therefore able to make secure attachments in the future. Whilst delay is always inimical to a child’s interests, there is nothing in L’s history or life experiences to date to suggest that her position is any different to any other child of 6 months. The sooner L (in common with all children in her position) is settled with a permanent primary carer the better. However, the generally accepted critical period for forming long term secure attachments would not have been be fatally compromised in L’s case to such that delay had, in her interests to be, to all intents and purposes, the determining factor. This was particularly so in circumstances where it was common ground that adopters could be identified quickly following the making of a placement order (and indeed following the making of the placement order now challenged, prospective adopters were identified within a matter of weeks).
  3. In weighing up the issue of attachment the judge in my judgment fell into error in that she did not mention the fact that the mother was having good quality contact 4 times a week, or to the high praise given to her by L’s very experienced foster carer, evidence in my judgment of considerable significance when considering L’s timescales and that the alternative was adoption

 

There is some school of thought that paragraph 47 opens the door wide for extensions of care proceedings beyond 26 weeks when dealing with an infant, because unless there is specific evidence of attachment problems, the crucial window of attachment development is not fatally compromised by extending proceedings.  And thus, delay arguments are greatly diminished.

 

I instead read that to be  that when balancing the two factors, in this fact specific case of a mother who had been abstinent for 13 months, a delay of 6 months was better for this child and a realistic option to be preferred to the most dramatic and permanent order of adoption. Delay in this case was not and should not have been the determining factor. I don’t think that Re P bears that weight that some might put upon it , that it is carte blanche for extensions of proceedings if the child is under 1 and showing no attachment damage. Both of the Acts still stand. Delay generally is harmful to children and must be justified and extensions beyond 26 weeks must only take place if to resolve the proceedings justly.

 

Expect, however, to see Re P wending its way into skeletons and position statements, and there being yet more boilerplate passages in judgments.

 

(I hope I’ve made it plain that my view is that Placement Order was not the right order in this case – I just don’t think paragraph 47 can be lifted wholesale into other cases where the facts are so different.  It clearly has very direct application to a case where a parent has a substantial period of abstinence under their belt pre-dating the proceedings and it is being argued that because more time is needed to be sure the abstinence will last the child should not wait.

 

 

 

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