K (Children)

Dispensing with a parent’s agreement to adoption requires a two-stage assessment. The court must first decide whether adoption serves the children’s best interests. It must then ask whether a hypothetical reasonable parent would agree to adoption in the circumstances. The parent’s natural emotional involvement does not prevent the court applying that objective standard. Permission to appeal should be refused where there is no realistic prospect that the Court of Appeal would interfere with the decision below.

The father applied to the Cardiff County Court for discharge of care orders concerning his two children and for contact. His applications were heard with the applications to adopt the children and to dispense with his agreement to adoption. The county court found no sufficient change in circumstances to justify assessing him as a carer, and concluded that adoption was in the children’s best interests. Applying the hypothetical reasonable-parent test, it held that a reasonable parent would agree to adoption.

The father sought permission to appeal, arguing that he loved the children, had changed his life and had not been given a proper opportunity to be assessed as their full-time carer. The central issues were whether the care orders should be discharged and whether the father’s agreement to adoption should be dispensed with.

1. Permission to appeal refused. Lady Justice Hale concluded that there was no prospect that the Court of Appeal would interfere with the county court’s decision.
2. The county court had correctly directed itself that dispensing with a parent’s agreement to adoption involved a two-stage test. First, the court had to decide whether adoption was in the children’s best interests. Secondly, it had to consider whether a hypothetical reasonable parent would agree to adoption in the circumstances.
3. On the first stage, the evidence showed that the children’s needs were being well met by prospective adopters with whom they had settled. A move would be enormously detrimental. The father had no practicable alternative to offer, and adoption was preferable to continued foster care.
4. On the second stage, the objective standard remained applicable even though parents cannot be expected to approach decisions about their own children with ordinary detachment. The law nevertheless requires the court to assess what a reasonable parent would do.
5. The judge was also entitled to conclude that there had been no sufficient change in the father’s circumstances to justify discharging the care orders or assessing him as a carer. The children had been separated from him for more than two years, and the history of domestic violence, imprisonment and failure to engage with arrangements for contact remained material.
6. The order refusing permission was made, and a transcript of the judgment was directed to be provided to the father at public expense.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Lady Justice Hale refused the father’s application for permission to appeal in [2002] EWCA Civ 1836.
• Cardiff County Court: His Honour Judge Hugh Jones dismissed the father’s applications to discharge the care orders and refused to require his agreement to the children’s adoption on 24 September 2002.