LA v FM & Ors

In care and adoption proceedings, parental love and a strong relationship with children do not by themselves establish that rehabilitation is safe. The court must evaluate all realistic placement options, with the children’s welfare as the paramount consideration, and must assess whether a parent can protect them from future significant harm within their welfare timescales.

Non-consensual adoption is a last resort. It is justified only where adoption is necessary and nothing else will do. Further assessment or delay should not be ordered merely because rehabilitation remains theoretically possible. There must be an evidential foundation for the prospects of successful change, and delay must be weighed against the children’s need for secure, stable and permanent care.

The local authority sought care and placement orders for two young children following the death of their older sibling while in the father’s care. The father had been charged with murder and remained in custody. In an earlier fact-finding judgment, the court found that he had caused the fatal injuries and had been violent towards the mother.

The mother initially denied the domestic violence and the father’s responsibility for the death. After the fact-finding hearing, she stated that she accepted the findings, had ended contact with the father and would cooperate with further assessment. The issue was whether that apparent change was sufficiently full and reliable to permit safe rehabilitation, or whether the children’s welfare required care and placement orders.

1. Outcome. The court made care orders and approved plans involving permanent separation from the birth family. It also made placement orders for both children and dispensed with the parents’ consent under section 52 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002.
2. The mother’s relationship with the children was strong and her direct care had been warm and loving. Those matters were nevertheless outweighed by the risks arising from her continuing minimisation of the father’s violence and her inability fully to acknowledge his responsibility for the child’s death.
3. Safe rehabilitation required the mother to acknowledge the harm suffered, understand how violence towards her placed the children at risk, and develop a reliable working relationship with professionals. Trust was essential because professionals needed to be able to rely on the information she provided when assessing and managing future risk.
4. A further forensic assessment and therapeutic work would take several months. The evidence gave a real doubt as to whether it would succeed. The children were very young and required a secure, stable and permanent home. Further delay would adversely affect their welfare, and the court rejected the prospect of unlimited delay based on uncertain rehabilitation.
5. The court evaluated the available placement options globally. Adoption was the only option capable of providing the children with the required lifelong security and stability. The loss of direct contact with their mother and their birth-family origins was a serious consequence, but could be partly addressed through indirect contact and life-story work.
6. Applying Re B (a child) [2013] UKSC 33, adoption was permissible only because it was necessary and nothing else would do. Long-term foster care would carry continuing uncertainty and a risk of placement breakdown. The children’s welfare therefore required parental consent to be dispensed with.