LRP (A Child) (Care Proceedings: Placement Order)

Adoption is a last resort. A court may approve it only where it is necessary for the child’s protection and nothing else will do. Before placing a child outside the natural family, the court must consider whether practical assistance or support could enable either parent to provide safe care.

The court must evaluate the positive and negative features of every realistic option through a global, holistic and multifaceted welfare assessment. It need not examine fanciful outcomes merely to demonstrate formal compliance. Long-term foster care should not be treated as equivalent to adoption where it cannot offer comparable legal security, permanence, predictability and belonging.

The local authority applied for care and placement orders concerning a ten-week-old infant. Earlier proceedings concerning her two older brothers had resulted in findings that the father posed a risk of significant physical harm and that the mother could neither recognise nor respond appropriately to that risk. The parents remained committed to their relationship and had made no material progress in addressing the identified dangers.

An independent social worker concluded that no available service or support could enable the mother to care for the child safely. The realistically available choices were a return to the parents or placement for adoption. The court had to determine whether adoption was necessary, whether any less interventionist option could protect the child, and whether the parents’ consent to placement should be dispensed with.

1. Care and placement orders were made. The earlier findings against both parents emphatically established the statutory threshold. The father continued to present unresolved risks, while the mother remained unable to protect the child and was committed to continuing their relationship.

2. Adoption was a very extreme intervention which could be ordered only when necessary, when nothing else would do and when all other options had failed. Consistently with Re KD [1988] AC 806, Re W [1993] 2FLR 625 and Re B [2013] UKSC 33, the child should remain within her natural family wherever that was compatible with her welfare.

3. Following Re B-S (Children) [2013] EWCA Civ 1146, the court considered whether practical assistance or support could enable either parent to care safely for the child. The independent evidence established that no such arrangement was available. The parents had not engaged meaningfully with interventions, the prognosis for change was poor and any treatment would require at least a year. That timescale was incompatible with the infant’s need for a permanent family without delay.

4. The court conducted a global and holistic evaluation of the positive and negative features of the competing options. Only a return to the parents and adoption were realistic. Friends previously mentioned as possible carers had not put themselves forward. Long-term foster care was not a genuine alternative and should not be introduced merely to satisfy formal expectations about option analysis. It was a precarious framework which lacked the legal security, permanence and enduring family belonging offered by adoption.

5. Although adoption would deprive the child of upbringing by her natural parents and could create future loss and identity issues, those disadvantages were outweighed by the protection, stability and lifelong security likely to be provided by an adoptive family. A return to the parents would expose her to the established risks of significant harm.

6. The late issue of the placement application caused no real unfairness. Both parents understood its purpose, were legally represented and sought no adjournment. The court dispensed with both parents’ consent under section 52(1) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 because the child’s welfare required it.

This was a first-instance determination of applications for care and placement orders. Earlier proceedings concerning the child’s older brothers had concluded with findings recorded in [2013] EWHC 2133. In the present proceedings, the court had initially refused to authorise immediate separation and directed a specialist mother-and-baby foster placement. After the mother left that placement and returned to the father, the hearing was enlarged to determine final orders.