Tag Archives: care proceedings

The Banality (and relative rarity) of evil

Posted on March 11, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

I suppose if you asked a member of the public whether evil was to be found in any of these groups :- politicians, estate agents, journalists, people who abuse children and lawyers; once you got past the obvious barbed remarks, there would be a consensus that there is one group where you might actually expect to find it, not just in the worst outliers of that group but diffused throughout.

I haven’t ever kept numbers, but I think I’ve probably done over three hundred care cases over my long and undistinguished career.  And I would say that I have come across more evil than the average person, but substantially less than you might expect, given that every single one of those cases has involved a parent subject to at least a suspicious of harming harmed (or doing something that would cause a risk of harm) to their child.  Of course, some of them are exonerated by the enquiry and either did nothing wrong (the suspicious-looking injury turned out to be an accident, the unpleasant allegation turns out to be fabricated, the evidence of neglect turning out to be something more akin to an evidence that different people have different standards), but that doesn’t account for all that many of the cases – probably 20 or so?

The vast majority of the cases I’ve been involved in – for Local Authorities and parents, have been with people who had changes they needed to make in their life, because they’d taken a wrong turn – whether that be drugs, alcohol, inability to cope, depression or in Wodehouse’s lovely expression “Mistaking it for a peach, having picked instead a lemon in the garden of love”.  Some of those people, when shown that the wrong turn was having an effect on their children they hadn’t realised are able to turn back, most want to and try their best but aren’t able to and some think that they don’t really have to make the choices between their children and something else that professionals are telling them they have to. Like the famous advertising maxim  “Fifty per cent of the money we spend on advertising is wasted, we just don’t know which half”,  you can never be sure of which family that resources and attention are being thrown at will respond, which of them will try but fall short, and which of them won’t really give their all thinking that they can have it all.

But actual evil?  Pretty rare. I would say that I have worked with probably 3 evil people in those 300, which, given that we are drawing from a group of people who had harmed, or were suspected of harming children is a tiny proportion. I have worked with more people who have brought about the deaths of children than I have evil parents.

I once visited a client, who I shan’t name, but had murdered some children; and whilst seeing her, was less than twenty feet away from Myra Hindley, who I think most people might come up with if trying to name a truly evil woman. She wasn’t platinum-blonde, defiant-eyed and black-lipsticked. In fact both of these two women would not have looked out of place in a mobile library. And that made me think of the banality of evil concept – that most people who do truly monstrous things are not necessarily what we in our head think of as being abominations, but are instead shockingly normal.

The Press never seem to get this – as we can see in the last year’s press coverage of the murder of Jo Yeates, it was felt acceptable to smear, vilify and identify a man as the likely killer for not much more than him having a distinctive physical appearance that the Press felt snapped closely into the model that they had in their head of what a killer would look like. They were utterly wrong, and nearly destroyed a man in the process, because he had unorthodox hair…

This whole disconnection between what people who do terrible things look and act like, and what we (persuaded by culture) think they look and act like, causes problems in care proceedings all the time. When we all know that paedophiles look like dirty old men in macs and that they would leap on a child and abuse them the second they got the chance, small wonder that vulnerable women faced with someone who looks like a regular person and who is kind to them, loving to them, and ‘wouldn’t hurt a fly’ and aren’t presenting like a slavering wolf drooling at the prospect of getting at the children find it hard to believe that the person they know could have done the things in the past that they’ve been accused of.  If we equate in the media all people who do awful things to children (and heaven knows I’m not defending the actions) as monsters, it’s no surprise that vulnerable mothers just think to themselves “If he had done those things he was accused of, he’d be a monster. I know him and he’s not a monster. So he’s been wrongly accused”

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Respect my prior authoriteh !

Posted on March 7, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

 

“I guess one person can make a difference… but most of the time, they probably shouldn’t”   – Marge Simpson

 

I would be very interested to know if this is a local problem, or more widespread, but I’ve had a spate over the last five months (getting steadily worse) of cases being delayed and my email being clogged full of problems about Prior Authority.  This tension seems to have arisen because the LSC appear to intepret a Court order that says “The costs of this expert be shared in equal one quarter shares between the Local Authority and the public funding certificates of the mother, father and Child” to actually mean “The costs be split one quarter to the LA, who have to pay up and shut up, whatever we feel like we want to pay, and the rest out of the solicitors profit costs – providing of course that we think the assessment should actually happen at all”  and “the report to be filed and served by 1st April 2012”  to mean “The expert report will be filed at some indeterminate time in the future, after we’ve processed prior authorities, granted one of them, rejected one of them, and refused one, then reconsidered on appeal”

 

 

If that’s sounding familiar, I have a suggested order, and a generic skeleton below, which I have been using in a concerted effort to educate the LSC that in Court proceedings, it is the Court who decide what reports take place, and who pays for them. Hint – the clue is in the wording of the initial order, and the omission of the words “Whatever we feel like we want to pay and the rest out of the solicitors profit costs”

 

Please let me know of problems or solutions in your area. It will all be helpful should the LSC decide to challenge the Court’s jurisdiction on costs.

 

Order :-

The Court orders that the costs of the assessment be met in equal one quarter shares between the Local Authority and the public funding certificates of the mother, father and Child/ren, it being a reasonable and proportionate disbursement for the purposes of public funding, and the Court having determined that the report is necessary for the resolution of the case.  In the event that the Legal Services Commission, who adminster the public funding certificates and payments made, seek to vary or set aside this order, such application should be made on notice to the parties, no later than                (2 weeks time).  If no such application has been made by that date, this order shall stand. The publicly funded parties shall serve both the sealed order, and a typed version of this order (to avoid delay in waiting for the sealed order) upon the branch of the LSC dealing with their certificate, forthwith.

 

Skeleton

Case No: 

IN THE                                  COURT

 

IN THE MATTER OF

 

AND IN THE MATTER OF THE CHILDREN ACT 1989

 

B E T W E E N:

Applicant

-and-

 

1st Respondent

-and-

 

 

2nd Respondent

-and-

 

 

(by his/her/their Guardian)

3rd Respondent

 

_____________________________

Skeleton argument

Prepared by the Local Authority

______________________________

 

 

Brief background

 

 

Proceedings in relation to                                            were commenced on                          .  [Information re dates of birth of the children, who the parents are, where the children are living and under what orders]

 

The concerns in the case relate to                                           as set out in the threshold document [page reference].

 

 

 

 

On [date] , the Court made the following direction relating to the instruction of an expert:-

 

 

 

 

Certain of the publicly funded parties made an application to the Legal Services Commission (hereafter LSC) for “Prior Authority”  – that is, agreement in advance of receipt of the invoice from the expert that the LSC would honour that payment.

 

Obtaining “Prior Authority” from the LSC is not a required element of the solicitors firms contract with the LSC, but many firms, locally and nationally, take the cautious and not unreasonable view that they would wish to ensure that the LSC will pay any costs incurred, as if they do not, the firm themselves are left paying any shortfall, thus taking a financial loss on dealing with the case.

 

The Local Authority would emphasise that they have sympathy and understanding for the solicitors firms involved, who have to operate in a financial climate where making up the shortfall between what an expert charges and what the LSC pays towards that expert fees can mean a Mr Micawber-esque outcome :- “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

 

 

The “Prior Authority” mechanism, whereby the solicitors firms seek reassurance from the LSC that their allotted share of the expert fees will be recouped in full, in advance of the expert incurring any fees (by commencing the work which has been directed), is sadly not flexible, fluid or swift enough for such results to be known in good time for the expert to undertake the work and hit the deadlines imposed by the Court. In many cases, the process is taking a period of months, rather than weeks, leading to significant delays in the expert commencing the work, and hence the report being available when directed. This in turn, leads to delays in the Court being able to resolve decisions for children.

 

 

 

The Local Authority stance is that the Court have ordered, legitimately and lawfully, that an expert report be commissioned, and ordered, legitimately and lawfully that the costs of that report be apportioned in a certain way. If the LSC now resist that legitimate and lawful order, they should seek to apply to vary or discharge it.

 

It is suggested that to clarify this position in future, it should be made explicit on the face of the order that if the LSC seek to vary or discharge the order as to the apportionment of costs, they do so within 14 days of the order being made, and that the publicly funded parties shall file and serve the order (or a typed note thereof) upon the branch of the LSC dealing with their particular certificate.

 

This then avoids the need for any application for Prior Authority, as the Court will have ordered how the costs are to be paid, and the LSC will have their opportunity to challenge that within timescales which are more suitable for the child, and the administration of justice.

 

 

 

 

Notwithstanding the legitimate desire of the LSC to manage their budget and to drive down the costs of expert assessment, the Local Authority submit that where this causes delay for the child, the system has not worked properly.

 

 

 

The law

 

 

Section 38(6) of the Children Act 1989 gives the Court the power to order that assessments be conducted within care proceedings.

 

That this power extended to directing how the assessments were to be paid for derives from a number of authorities, notably

 

CALDERDALE METROPOLITAN BOROUGH COUNCIL V (1) S (2) LEGAL SERVICES COMMISSION (2004)

 

[2004] EWHC 2529 (Fam)

 

In which the High Court determined that the Court had jurisdiction to order that the costs of obtaining an assessment be divided in whatever way it saw fit, including making provision  (as in this case) that the Local Authority pay one quarter, and each of the three publicly funded parties pay their own one quarter share through their public funding certificate.

 

It will be noted that the LSC played an active role within that case.

 

The principles in Calderdale were revisited in

 

LAMBETH LBC v S (2005)

 

[2005] EWHC 776 (Fam)

Fam Div (Ryder J) 03/05/2005

 

Where the High Court determined that funding of section 38(6) assessments was not outside the remit of the LSC, and importantly that the Commissions own guidance on funding was not binding on the Court.

 

 

Some extracts from that judgment which are pertinent to the issue here (and given that it was made nearly seven years ago, prescient)  :-

 

Paragraph 43 : – “It is equally correct that the Community Legal Service Fund has fixed and limited resources but so do local authorities… the services they both provide are inextricably linked to the obligation on the Court to ensure within the Court’s process the exploration rather than the exclusion of expert assessment and opinion that might negate the State’s case for the permanent removal of a child from his parents”

 

Paragraph 62 : –  “ There is already a healthy delegation of the Commission’s powers and duties to the parties legal advisors. That practice of delegation was very properly exercised on the facts of this case and as a matter of practice around the country great care is taken by publicly funded practitioners to abide by their duties. A paper review of a case by the Commission is in any event a poor substitute for the Court’s overall impression gained by its continuous case management”

 

Paragraph 63 “It is a matter for them (the LSC) to put in place guidance to deal with exceptional expense provided that any prior authority or notification systems do not cause delay”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Court do have the power, under Rule 25.4 (4) of the Family Procedure Rules 2010 , set out below, to limit the amount of an experts fee and the expenses that may be recovered from any other party.  There is nothing within that power to circumscribe HOW the Court may limit the amount, and certainly nothing to indicate that they are bound by the LSC’s own internal policy or guidance.

 

Court’s power to restrict expert evidence

25.4.—(1) No party may call an expert or put in evidence an expert’s report without the court’s permission.

(2) When parties apply for permission they must identify—

(a) the field in which the expert evidence is required; and

(b) where practicable, the name of the proposed expert.

(3) If permission is granted it will be in relation only to the expert named or the field identified under paragraph(2).

(4) The court may limit the amount of a party’s expert’s fees and expenses that may be recovered from any other party

 

 

The Court must consider, in any application to vary or discharge the original order :-

 

Section 1 (1) of the Children Act 1989  “when a Court determines any question with respect to (a) the upbringing of the child; the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration.

 

And section (1) (2) of the Children Act 1989 “in any proceedings in which any question with respect to the upbringing of a child arises, the court shall have regard to the general principle that any delay in determining the question is likely to prejudice the welfare of the child”

 

The paramount consideration is the child’s welfare, and that delay is likely to be prejudicial to that welfare; rather than the financial aspects (important as they legitimately are to both the LSC and the firms involved)

 

 

It is submitted as a result of all that has preceded,  that :-

 

(a)    the Court has power to direct that an assessment take place (pace s38(6) of the Children Act 1989)

(b)   the Court has power to direct that the costs of the assessment be apportioned in such way as they see fit, including directing that the parties public funding certificates bear all or some of the costs  (pace Calderdale)

(c)    The LSC own internal policy on funding, and the limits they will pay in relation to experts is not binding on the Court (pace Lambeth)

(d)   The Court does have the power to set a cost limitation when instructing an expert, and also when considering any application to vary the original order.  (pace rule 25.4 (4) of the Family Procedure Rules 2010)

(e)    If the consequences of setting a cost limit and varying the existing order, mean that a fresh assessment be commissioned, or significant delay incurred, the Court cannot make that variation without considering the provisions of section 1 (1) and section 1 (2) of the Children Act 1989

 

And that

 

(f)    the interests of the child would be better served by the report which is so close to completion being completed and filed and served, as originally intended, and for the existing order to remain in place, with no cost cap being added.

 

 

The Local Authority would accept that in some cases where the LSC actively seek to become involved and make representations, that the balance might well fall another way, and that the LSC’s perfectly legitimate motivation in controlling costs and curbing what had been excesses might justify the Court setting a cap pursuant to rule 25.4 (4) of the FPR.

 

In this case, however, it is not. Decisions here need to be made about this child/these children, and what the appropriate arrangements for his/her/their family life should be.

 

In general, the Local Authority would suggest that where Prior Authority is  refused, then there is a need for the case to be urgently restored for directions, to consider whether the original direction needs to be varied, and the impact on the timetable generally.  The Local Authority would remark that a great deal of their time is currently spent on wrangling with decisions in relation to Prior Authority and whether expert assessments which have been directed by the Court can take place, and many of these disputes have led to delay for the children concerned.

 

 

 

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Three, is not the magic number

Posted on March 3, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

I’ve been pondering this week about an issue that seems to come up more and more. Obviously, this whole article is prefaced by the caveat that children are better off with their birth family or family members if at all possible, even if that means a lot of support going in, so the issue arises in cases where the Court is being presented with a plan by the Local Authority that a sibling group can’t go home to the birth family or extended family.

It is the vexed question of separation of siblings – how far can anyone predict whether the future desired placements will materialise, does there ever come a point at which the desired outcome of keeping a sibling group together actually becomes harmful (i.e the trade-off between them being together versus them not having stable, lasting placements but running the risk of placement breakdowns), and to what extent is the detail of the care planning for a sibling group within the control of the Court, and what happens if the Court don’t want to let go of the reins because they doubt that what has been promised will be delivered?.  I’m probably going to do a post about the official solution to the “starred care plans” issue, and whether that official solution actually works in practice  (hint, since the introduction of the IRO referring to CAFCASS, CAFCASS making an application system has been in place, CAFCASS have had 8 such requests, and issued on none of them)

But one thing kept coming to my mind, and it is that children in a sibling group of three are the most difficult in this argument. A single child, siblings don’t arise. Two children – you generally want to keep them together (although if there’s a big age difference, that can be tricky) and you stand a good chance of doing so. Four children, it is generally accepted that you’re unlikely to be able to keep them together and although you may try to find such a placement, the consensus is that it would be a beautiful and pleasant surprise if you managed it, but not something you’d be condemned for if you couldn’t. Five and over, and it is accepted that the siblings would have to be split and the debate is about how to do this.

When you have a group of three, however, there remains a disconnect between what people hope and expect  (you should be able to keep these siblings together, and you must find them a placement together, because splitting them would be terrible) and what the reality of carers searching for sibling groups of three actually are.  Even assuming your sibling group of three has no particular quirky features, no unusual cultural issues, not a high level of post placement contact being planned, they have no significant behavioural problems  (all of which assumptions are not necessarily the reality), the carers in the available pool who are looking for sibling groups of three are very limited.

A figure I saw this week suggested that currently for sibling groups of three or more, there are far, far, far more sibling groups looking for carers than there are carers looking for sibling groups.  [I was going to give the figures, but had an attack of unease about doing so – but if you’re imagining that there are five sibling groups for every one carer looking for a sibling group, you’re way, way overestimating the number of carers]  

That doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t try, or shouldn’t try really really hard, or that for any one of those individual sibling groups that not being placed together is anything other than a  tragedy  (having already given my caveat that this arises only if they CAN’T go home or to extended family), but it strikes me that no matter how hard one tries, no matter how fervently every professional involved scours the potential placements, not all of the sibling groups who are competing for a much, much smaller pool of carers are going to find placements together.

Even if we tripled the number of carers who want sibling groups; by some magical recruitment process, or as Gove is suggesting by dramatically reducing standards/the exhaustive bureacratic and draining process (depending on where you stand), still the vast majority of those sibling groups of three waiting to be placed together (who all professionals have determined, really really need to be together if at all possible) are going to be let down. And are we letting them down further by spending months of such a critical period in the children’s lives searching for something that has a high probability can’t be delivered?

I don’t know what the solution is. Long-term, taking action to either support families, to prop up and improve placements within the family, to get the treatment that parents who have been through the care system process badly need, or earlier intervention on the first child, so that we don’t get three children needing to be removed, with a view to massively reducing the need for large sibling groups to come before the Court. A whole different approach with foster carers – the concurrency model rolled out across the board, so that more often than not, the people fostering the children during the proceedings do so with an open mind that they would offer them a home for life, if needed? I don’t know what you would need to offer, or seek in recruitment to make concurrency foster placements the norm rather than an exception.

But we are working in a reactive system. What Government is ever going to throw millions of pounds of public money in helping parents who have heroin addictions or alcohol problems, and stand firm in front of the criticism that would come from the Daily Mail about that policy? Even if those millions would save that tenfold over time, and greatly reduce the human tragedy that ever single set of care proceedings inevitably is, no matter how well handled they are?

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Not just clean-bowled

Posted on February 27, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

I’ll be doing a more detailed analysis of the Government’s decision, when responding to the Family Justice Review, to not adopt the recommendation to abolish Court fees for care proceedings, which went up from £175 per case to around £5000 (if the case goes to final hearing, it is cheaper if it is resolved at Issue Resolution Hearing), but in very broad terms :-

The consultation about the change to fees was rolled out on a Government website on New Year’s Eve  (I like to think Local Government lawyers are hard-working and don’t keep the hours that the general public might stereotypically associate with public sector workers, rightly or wrongly, but even we have better things to do on New Year’s Eve)

The consulation proceeded on the premise that the principle that the full costs of care proceedings to the Court service should be met by Local Authorities. And basically gave a range of choices about whether they wanted to be punched in the stomach, kidneys or face while they were being mugged. There was plenty of talk about how the fee increase wasn’t intended to be a lever to drive down the number of care applications within that consultation. Most LA lawyers who responded to the consultation made exactly the point that there was a risk of it being used that way. The consultation disregarded this.

The numbers of care proceedings issued dropped like a stone (there was the additional complication of the PLO, which got rid of delay in care proceedings (ha!) by front-loading them so that all the delay happened before the case got to Court, so I couldn’t claim that they were responsible for the entireity of the plummet)

Then Baby P came along, the numbers spiked up and have kept doing so, and the Government invited Lord Laming to report, saying that they would accept all his recommendations. He reported, saying that he feared that if even one application that should have been made to Court had not been because of the fees, then they should be scrapped and recommended that a report look into that.

The Plowden review reported and recommended the abolition of Court fees.  The Government didn’t respond to that. In fact, it took a Parliamentary question to get from them that they intended to kick it into the long grass and leave it for whoever won the (at the time imminent) election to resolve.

The new Government kicked it into the long grass, and waited for the Family Justice Review. The interim FJR recommended the abolition of court fees. The full report came, and recommended the total abolition of Court fees in care proceedings. The Government accepted most of the other recommendations (wavering about presumptions of shared parenting) and rejected the abolition of Court fees in care proceedings.

To me, this is a batsman at the crease who is clean bowled, and says he wasn’t ready, then is LBW next ball, and says the sun was in his eyes, and then finally is caught and just stands at the crease, refusing to walk and says “Come on, next ball – I’ve got a good feeling about this innings”

Why does it matter?  Well, it has a huge financial impact on Local Authorities – it would be fair to say that most of them don’t get anywhere close to breaking even from the money Central Government gave for this purpose, and pay out far, far more. But more importantly, it has an impact on parents.

When I started out, I used to issue care proceedings on parents who were in danger of losing their children if they didn’t turn things around – we applied for Supervision Orders and Interim Supervision Orders. And in many cases, being in Court, and having representation, and hearing from a Guardian and a Judge who would explain to the parents that they could be helped to avoid an awful calamity did the trick.  LA’s don’t apply for many Supervision Orders now – despite the spike in the numbers of proceedings, most of the time, LA’s go to Court when they perceive they are at the end of the road with the parents (sometimes we’re right, sometimes we’re wrong, but the mindset is that we are in Court to say ‘we can’t manage this at home any more’).   The application form for Care proceedings has a section on it (before the page where the form asks you the gender of the mother…) where you indicate whether you seek an Interim Care Order or an Interim Supervision Order.  If I had any confidence that HMCS kept stats, that would be a fine Freedom of Information question – the proportion of cases where an LA issues seeking an Interim Supervision Order  (reflecting that it isn’t the end of the road, but a significant junction where a parent can choose a better course)

And the other huge impact that the Government hasn’t thought about, is that if you keep the Court fees as they are, and implement the hard six month cap; you exclude Local Authorities reaching a conclusion in cases where there’s general progress, but a wobble (a parent is abstinent for five months, but has a lapse just before the final hearing for example) to say “Let’s give this a try with a Supervision Order – we can always bring it back to Court”  if giving that benefit of the doubt is going to cost £5000 to get it wrong. Much easier to do it under a Care Order.  Which is fine if the lapse was just a lapse, and no more, but what happens when it is a relapse instead, and rather than having to bring it back to Court and prove it, the Care Order (which remember will come with a much looser care plan than at present) just kicks into force and the child is removed without a hearing?

I rather suspect we might be seeing an increase in the number of Care Orders made at final hearings, as an accidental consequence of a flawed system.

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Posted on February 14, 2012 by suesspiciousminds
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I was reading a case today – notably this one 

L (Children) [2011] EWCA Civ 1705

 in which Lord Justice MacFarlane manages to squeeze more elegance into one paragraph than most mortals can dream of  – thus

“In terms of clarity, thoroughness and overall structure, this judgment by HHJ Dowse is exemplary.  No criticism is made during the course of this appeal in respect of the judge’s detailed directions to himself as to the law.  In short, on its face it is a gem of a judgment but this appeal rightly raises the question, despite its sheen, is it nevertheless flawed?” 

The appeal is considering some very specialist medical evidence, centring around whether two children who had died did so of unnatural causes, or of some medical condition; and what impact that had on the likelihood, or otherwise of future harm to the siblings. More than that, however, the Court had to wrestle with the hypothesis that the cause of the children’s deaths might be as yet unknown to medical science, and thus unquantifiable. The experts were, no doubt through very careful, appropriate and skilful questioning, drawn towards placing some percentage chance on that possibility – two felt that the chance of the cause being non-accidental was around 90%, and one felt that it was no higher than 70%.  Both, of course, result in it being open to a Judge to make a finding that it was more likely than not that the deaths had been caused non-accidentally and go on to derive a likelihood of harm to the younger children.

But it struck me, that here were doctors, extraordinarily eminent in their field and capabilities – with demonstrable, verifiable and repeatable empirical evidence – they had been able to conduct tests and establish the presence of a particular gene variant; yet prepared to tell a Court that effectively their science only goes so far, and that there are possibilities that we do not yet know of, that in years to come might very well dramatically tip those percentages given above.

It reminded me of RE R (A CHILD) sub nom R (CARE PROCEEDINGS: CAUSATION) (2011) [2011] EWHC 1715 (Fam)       Sadly, I don’t have a link on that one – but the facts are fascinating – a serious head injury, coupled with a leg fracture. The Court grappled with the medical evidence, and one medic in particular outlined to the Court that there was a school of thought in relation to head injuries amongst medical specialists which simply accepted that at present, we just don’t know enough to be confidently certain and making bold diagnosis about causation of injuries.

Again, that’s an expert who has the basis of science and empirical evidence behind them. There are scans and tests, and results, and what one expert sees on the scans, another would see (though they might come to different conclusions about the cause, they’d agree on the nature of the injury)   And yet, within care proceedings, one never sees that with psychologists – a Socratic acceptance that we don’t yet know everything, and we are making our best informed guess at it, based on the information and techniques that usually work.  A key difference for me, is that the medical experts are looking at something which has happened, and can look carefully at the evidence that supports such a diagnosis, whereas the psychologists are taking something as generally unpredictable as human behaviour, and what someone might do in six months, a year, and making predictions about the future for that person – notwithstanding that the sort of person who often goes to see a psychologist in care proceedings is doing so because they’ve lived a life doing non-rational and unpredictable things.

I personally think that the doctors who spoke up in those hearings and said effectively “It would be lovely to be able to tell you that I’m SURE that this was an accident, or not an accident, or organic in cause, but all I can be SURE of, is that we can’t be SURE”    – my more cynical youth would have speculated that they were making a name for themselves as helpful people to call if you wanted a counter-opinion, but I think with the benefit of age and experience, that they were just calling it truthfully.

If the people who are telling you, with tests and X-rays, and chemical analysis, that they can’t be certain of what happened in the past; how can we put so much stock in the people who tell us with no hard science that they’re sure of what is going to happen for this child in the future?

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