MM (A Child : Long Term Fostering / Placement With Family Members : Wishes and Feelings), Re

In long-term welfare decisions, a child’s wishes and feelings must be considered but cannot determine the outcome where the child lacks the maturity, insight and capacity to weigh the competing advantages and risks. Decisions must be made by responsible adults with relevant information, giving priority to the child’s overall welfare needs.

The court may have to make a permanent placement decision on sufficient evidence without every aspect of the care plan being fully assessed. Further expert evidence is justified only where it is necessary to resolve the proceedings. A legally secure and enduring family placement may be required instead of continued long-term fostering where that better meets the child’s welfare needs.

These were the final welfare-stage proceedings concerning a seven-year-old boy who had been in interim care after removal from his mother. The local authority initially proposed long-term fostering with his current foster carer. Following a favourable special guardianship assessment and further contact, the local authority, the mother and the maternal great aunt and uncle supported a plan for the boy to move permanently to the relatives’ home.

The Children’s Guardian opposed immediate approval and sought a further specialist assessment of the boy’s emotional needs. The central issues were whether the court should delay the permanence decision, whether further expert assessment was necessary, and what weight should be given to the child’s expressed wish to remain with his foster carer.

1. The revised care plan was approved. The boy should move to live with his maternal great aunt and uncle at the beginning of the October half-term. He should be told promptly that the decision was settled and that contact with his foster carer would not thereby be lost.
2. The court must generally decide a child’s welfare on a sufficiency of evidence. It is seldom possible for every conceivable element of a care plan to have been established by detailed assessment. Further assessment was unnecessary because the available evidence showed that the relatives were highly likely to meet the boy’s welfare needs.
3. By rule 25.1 of the amended Family Procedure Rules, expert evidence is restricted to evidence necessary to assist the court to resolve the proceedings. The amended test is significantly more stringent than the former test of evidence reasonably required. A further assessment of the boy’s emotional needs was not necessary.
4. For a young child, wishes and feelings are relevant but cannot be determinative of a major permanence decision. A child of that age lacks the maturity, insight, perspective and capacity to weigh the risks and advantages of the alternatives and cannot be the arbiter of his or her own best interests. The decision must be made by responsible adults who have the relevant information and give priority to overall welfare.
5. It was wrong for the Guardian to tell the boy that she and the local authority had agreed the long-term plan before eliciting his views. That presentation risked confusing him and conveying that the decision was already a fait accompli. The court considered that the conversation had caused some emotional harm.
6. Long-term fostering, even with an excellent foster carer, was inadequate where the child required a legally secure, permanent and enduring family structure. The relatives’ home offered advantages of belonging and commitment which the temporary foster placement could not provide.

First-instance decision in final welfare-stage care proceedings. No appeal or lower-court decision is stated in the judgment.