S (A Child)

Care and placement orders leading to adoption are exceptional measures. The court must treat adoption as a last resort and actively evaluate proportionality in the individual case. It must have reliable evidence about the parent’s prospective care, the support required, and realistic alternatives to separation. A judge must distinguish the threshold question from the later welfare evaluation. Before dispensing with parental consent, the court must be satisfied that the child’s welfare requires consent to be dispensed with. A judgment must engage substantively with the lifelong consequences of adoption and explain why the child’s welfare makes that outcome necessary.

The mother appealed from care and placement orders made by His Honour Judge Oliver in the Reading County Court on 8 February 2013. The orders followed care proceedings concerning K, then an infant, and approved a care plan for adoption. The mother had a learning disability and had cared for K in supported accommodation, where K’s basic needs had been met, but the local authority had not obtained a proper assessment of her parenting or clearly identified the support available in the community.

The Court of Appeal considered whether the threshold was established and, principally, whether the judge had sufficient evidence to decide that separation, a care order with a plan for adoption, and a placement order were necessary and proportionate. It also considered whether the judgment properly addressed the statutory requirements governing adoption and parental consent.

1. Appeal allowed. The care and placement orders were overturned and set aside. The matter was remitted to the county court for an urgent directions hearing before a different judge and for the welfare stage to be reheard.
2. The threshold was properly treated as a likely-future-harm case rather than an actual-harm case. In light of the mother’s history, the earlier proceedings concerning her older children, the conceded position at first instance, and the substantial support required when proceedings were issued, an appeal against the finding that the threshold criteria were met was almost inevitably doomed to fail.
3. The judge nevertheless lacked the evidence needed for a reliable welfare decision. The local authority had failed to obtain a proper assessment of the mother’s likely future care of K and her support needs, and had not provided clear, reliable information about what support could be made available in the community. Its conclusion that no suitable arrangement could keep mother and child together could not securely be reached on that evidential basis.
4. Threshold and welfare issues required careful separation. Later progress could reveal information about the position at the threshold date, but the welfare hearing had to remain free to consider all the evidence and make its own findings without being bound by the earlier judge’s findings on the subject.
5. Adoption required substantive consideration of proportionality. The judge had not sufficiently recognised the exceptional and lifelong consequences of severing the relationship between mother and child, nor adequately justified why K’s welfare required adoption. He had also failed to address section 52(1)(b) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, which required the child’s welfare to require dispensing with parental consent. The approach required by Re B (a child) [2013] UKSC 33 and Re G (a child) [2013] EWCA Civ 965 had not been demonstrated.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Appeal allowed. The care and placement orders made below were set aside. The welfare stage was remitted to the Reading County Court before a different judge.
• Reading County Court: His Honour Judge Oliver made a care order with a care plan for adoption and a placement order on 8 February 2013.