G (A Child)

In care and adoption proceedings, an appellate court should not interfere with a trial judge’s welfare evaluation merely because the evidence is finely balanced or the judgment contains infelicities. A judge who has fairly summarised relevant evidence need not repeat and re-weigh it in the concluding paragraphs. A guardian’s recommendation is not determinative. A failure by a guardian to visit the home may be a serious error, but is not necessarily fatal to the report or decision. Persistent neglect and recurring instability in intimate relationships may justify an inference that the pattern will continue. The decisive issue is the child’s welfare and risk of future harm, not parental intellectual disability alone.

The mother sought permission to appeal from orders made by HHJ Neligan in the Exeter County Court on 10 July 2007. The orders placed E, aged 14 months, under a full care order in favour of Torbay Council and authorised the local authority, under section 21 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, to place her for adoption. The threshold for a care order under section 31 of the Children Act 1989 was conceded. The mother argued that the judge had misstated and failed to weigh evidence of improved parenting, misunderstood the effect of her learning difficulties, and treated the children’s guardian’s recommendation as effectively decisive. The central issue was whether those criticisms disclosed a realistically arguable error requiring permission to appeal.

Application refused. Lord Justice Wilson held, with Lord Justice Toulson agreeing, that the proposed grounds did not disclose a realistically arguable error.

1. The judge had fairly recited the evidence that the mother’s parenting had improved, including the favourable professional evidence. He was not required to return to that evidence in the paragraphs containing his conclusions. He was entitled to assess it against the wider history and to prefer the more cautious evidence of the local authority’s professionals.
2. Several passages in the judgment were capable of clearer expression. Read in context, however, the judge had not concluded that E’s development was due exclusively to professional support, nor that the mother’s difficulties arose independently of her intellectual disability. He was rejecting social engineering based solely on intellectual ability and was instead relying on parenting capacity and relationship instability.
3. The guardian had made a grave error by failing to visit the mother’s home and observe her with E before making her final recommendation. The judge’s reasoning about that omission was inconsistent, but the inconsistency was an infelicity rather than a material legal error. The guardian’s recommendation was not dispositive. The judge’s statement that he could find no persuasive reason to reject it meant that he could find no child-welfare reason to avoid adoption, which was in principle the second-best solution to placement with a natural parent.
4. The history of serious neglect of the older children, together with the mother’s almost seamless movement between unstable relationships, entitled the judge to infer that the earlier pattern was likely to continue. That inference remained open despite E’s current satisfactory development and the substantial support provided. The proposed further assessment was reasonably viewed as an assessment of circumstances likely to change quickly.
5. The judge’s conclusion was difficult but was not plainly wrong. The criticisms did not make it properly appealable. The formal order was that the application for permission to appeal be refused.

1. Court of Appeal (Civil Division): On 20 July 2007, the court refused the mother’s application for permission to appeal: [2007] EWCA Civ 1054.
2. Exeter County Court: On 10 July 2007, HHJ Neligan made a full care order in favour of Torbay Council and authorised placement of E for adoption under section 21 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002.