CH v The London Borough of Merton

Permission to oppose an adoption application requires a two-stage assessment. The court must first decide whether there has been a relevant change of circumstances sufficient to reopen the placement-order question. If so, it must assess whether the parent has solid, rather than fanciful, prospects of successfully resisting an adoption order and then undertake a welfare evaluation.

The statutory bar should not be set too high, but the child’s lifelong welfare remains paramount. The court must consider past events, present circumstances and future prospects. Placement with prospective adopters or the passage of time is not decisive. Where the required change has not been established, the court need not undertake the second-stage evaluation.

CH applied for permission to oppose the adoption of her eight-month-old daughter, LRP. A placement order had been made in earlier care proceedings, and LRP had subsequently been placed with prospective adopters. CH relied principally on her separation from the child’s father, relocation away from his family, engagement with support services and the availability of family support.

The local authority opposed the application. The central issue was whether those matters amounted to a relevant change in circumstances sufficient to reopen the placement-order question.

1. Application dismissed. The court found that CH had not established a change in circumstances of a nature and degree sufficient to reopen consideration of the placement order.
2. The governing approach was a two-stage process. First, the court had to decide whether there had been a relevant or material change sufficient to reopen the issue; the statute did not require the change to be significant. The threshold should not be set so high that parents are discouraged from improving themselves or seeking to prevent adoption, as explained in Re P (Adoption: Leave Provisions) [2007] 2FLR, Re B [2013] 2FLR 1075 and Re B-S (Adoption: Application of s.47(5)) [2013] 2FLR 1035.
3. If a relevant change were established, the court would assess whether the parent’s prospects of resisting an adoption order were more than fanciful and possessed solidity. It would then weigh those prospects against the child’s welfare throughout life, considering past events, present circumstances and future possibilities. Adoption remains a remedy of last resort, but welfare may nevertheless require refusal of leave. The court should consider the risks and advantages of both options, without treating placement or the passage of time as determinative.
4. The greater the change and the more solid the parent’s grounds, the more cogent and compelling the welfare reasons would need to be if leave were refused. Firm case management could reduce disruption caused by a contested adoption application, and undue weight should not be given to the impact on prospective adopters.
5. On the evidence, CH showed some early signs of change, including relocation and engagement with support services, but continued to lack insight into the matters identified in the care proceedings. Her longstanding psychological and emotional difficulties, tendency to blame others and inability to place her children first remained substantially unchanged. The first-stage requirement therefore failed decisively.
6. It was unnecessary to conduct the second-stage assessment. Had it been necessary, the court would have concluded that CH’s prospects of successfully resisting an adoption order were nil, and that requiring her to undergo a contested adoption application would have been cruel.