M (Children), Re

At the interim stage of care proceedings, the threshold for protective intervention and the proportionality of removal are distinct questions. The court must assess reasonable grounds for believing that significant harm has occurred or is likely, together with the welfare checklist, to decide how the child should be protected pending fuller investigation. Risk assessment requires evaluation of the evidence as a whole, including reasonable inferences, rather than suspicion or speculation.

When choosing a child’s future placement, the court must undertake a global and holistic evaluation of every realistic option. It must assess the internal merits and disadvantages of each option, including adoption and the lifelong consequences of separation from the original family. The process must not be a linear elimination exercise.

The proceedings concerned four children, their mother, two fathers and the maternal grandparents. The children had initially lived with the grandparents without a proper professional assessment. The local authorities later commenced public law proceedings after concerns arose about sexual abuse, mental health, offending, unsafe family relationships and the grandparents’ ability to protect the children.

The grandparents and one father sought to care for the children. During the hearing, the grandparents and another father abandoned those applications. The remaining issues included disputed factual allegations, the care plans for the children, and the extent of contact with family members. The central questions were whether the threshold and interim protective requirements had been properly evaluated, and which long-term arrangements best served each child’s welfare.

1. Interim protection. The local authority bore the burden of establishing the statutory basis for interim protection. The criteria under section 38(2) of the Children Act 1989 should not be conflated with the separate question whether removal was proportionate. The court must assess the reasonable grounds for believing that the children had suffered significant harm within section 31(2), considered with the welfare checklist in section 1(3), to determine whether and how protection should be provided pending fuller investigation. The local authority had set the test too high by focusing on the forensic difficulty of proving the case rather than evaluating the risks. [14]–[17]
2. Fact-finding. Findings must be based on evidence and reasonable inferences, not suspicion or speculation. Evidence must be assessed in the round. The court should consider the relevance of each strand to the totality of the evidence rather than placing evidence into separate compartments. Applying that approach, the court made findings concerning sexual abuse, failures to protect and inappropriate sexual boundaries, while declining to determine allegations unnecessary to the welfare decisions. [31]–[33], [45]–[49]
3. Long-term welfare evaluation. In relation to adoption and other placement options, the court applied a global, holistic evaluation. It considered the children’s differing ages, relationships, needs, risks, sibling relationships and the internal merits and disadvantages of each care plan. Adoption was not an automatic consequence of rejecting other placements. The court had to consider the lifelong welfare consequences of ceasing to be a member of the original family and becoming an adopted person under section 1 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002. [50]–[55]
4. The plans for all four children were approved. The two younger children were placed on an adoptive plan. Special guardianship orders were made for the two older children, with maternal-grandparent contact limited to twice yearly and subject to constant, vigilant and informed review because of the grandparents’ identified risks. [56]–[57]