Re Z (A Child)

There is no absolute rule that professionally supervised contact must end after three to six months. The appropriate duration is fact-sensitive and depends on the child’s welfare and the risks identified in the individual case. A first-instance judge must evaluate the competing factors, including risks of abduction or emotional harm, the child’s needs and vulnerabilities, the parents’ capacities, and the available safeguards. An appellate court should not interfere merely because another judge might have reached a different welfare assessment, particularly where the decision was reached by an experienced tribunal after a careful evaluation.

The applicant father renewed his application for permission to appeal against a decision of the President of the Family Division refusing to order direct contact with his daughter. The President had considered the risks of future abduction, the father’s abandonment of a residence application, the needs and qualities of all three family members, the child’s vulnerabilities, and the possibility of professionally supervised contact followed by review. The central issue was whether she had erred in principle by treating longer-term supervised contact as wrong in principle or impractical.

Application refused. Lord Justice Thorpe held that the proposed appeal had no sufficiently realistic prospect of success.

1. The submission that the President had refused longer-term supervised contact on an erroneous absolute principle would have had force if that were the true and only basis of her decision. The reference to Re DH [1994] 1 FLR 679 at 703 demonstrated that supervised contact over a lengthy period may be appropriate where the facts require it.
2. The President’s reasoning had a wider foundation. She first considered whether there was a real risk of future abduction and whether the abandonment of the residence application was genuine. She resolved both issues against the father.
3. She then assessed the competing welfare factors. These included the father’s strengths and weaknesses, the mother’s qualities as a parent, the child’s needs and vulnerabilities, the risk that contact might be used to denigrate the mother, and the possibility of professionally supervised contact followed by review.
4. The President concluded that the harm caused by the child not seeing her father was significantly outweighed by the risk of real harm if contact beyond short-term close supervision were arranged. That was a finely balanced welfare judgment, not a legal misdirection.
5. An appellate court should recognise the particular experience of the first-instance tribunal and should not grant permission merely because another judge might have adopted a different approach.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): on a renewed application for permission to appeal, Lord Justice Thorpe refused permission against the decision of the President of the Family Division.