Q (A Child), Re

In private law children proceedings, the court’s positive duty to promote and restore parental contact does not require it to persist with judicial enforcement when that course is likely to harm the child and has no realistic prospect of success. Contact remains a fundamental element of family life, and its cessation requires careful scrutiny. However, the child’s welfare is paramount.

A judge may use robust case-management powers to end or pause litigation where further investigation or a contested hearing offers no real advantage to the child. A therapeutic intervention may properly be preferred where it offers the only realistic prospect of repairing emotional harm and restoring the parent-child relationship. Such a course does not abdicate the court’s responsibility if it preserves the possibility of future proceedings and is directed to the child’s long-term welfare.

The father appealed against an order made in long-running private law proceedings concerning Q. The Central Family Court found that Q had suffered significant emotional harm in the context of parental conflict and the mother’s hostility to the father. It also found that forcing immediate contact would aggravate that harm.

The judge rejected further enforcement of contact and a Children Act 1989 section 37 report. He made a specific issue order requiring both parents to cooperate in Q’s referral for assessment and treatment at the Violet Melchett Centre. He made no further child-arrangements order, so that therapy could proceed without the stress of continuing litigation.

The appeal concerned whether ending the immediate proceedings without ordering contact or a further contested hearing was procedurally unfair, incompatible with the father’s rights, or an impermissible abandonment of the court’s duty to promote contact.

1. Appeal dismissed unanimously. The judge’s order was within the proper ambit of his discretion. His decision to end the immediate proceedings and require therapeutic assessment and treatment was the course most likely to promote the eventual restoration of Q’s relationship with his father.
2. The court reaffirmed the principles in Re C (A Child) (Suspension of Contact) [2011] EWCA Civ 521. Contact is ordinarily a fundamental part of family life. A court must take all reasonably available steps to facilitate it, consider alternatives carefully, and take a medium- and long-term view. Nevertheless, welfare is paramount, and the duty to promote contact is not a duty to impose coercion where doing so would harm the child.
3. The judge had correctly recognised that his previous strategy had failed. On the evidence, another attempt to enforce contact by legal means was almost bound to fail and would harm Q. A further hearing, whether or not accompanied by a section 37 report under the Children Act 1989, was unlikely to add material information or change either parent’s attitude.
4. The judge was entitled to accept the guardian’s and clinicians’ advice that therapy required proceedings to cease. Therapy was a non-judicial means of seeking the outcome which judicial measures had failed to achieve. The order did not prematurely abandon contact or abdicate the continuing judicial responsibility to reconstitute the relationship. It expressly contemplated a possible future return to court.
5. The judge acted within the case-management principles in Re C (Family Proceedings: Case Management) [2012] EWCA Civ 1489. He had sufficient material from the lengthy history to conclude that no advantage to Q would arise from further oral evidence or investigation. There was no breach of the father’s Article 6 or Article 8 rights.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division) — Dismissed the father’s appeal in [2015] EWCA Civ 991.
• Central Family Court — On 8 August 2014, His Honour Judge Glen Brasse made a specific issue order requiring cooperation with therapeutic assessment and treatment, and made no further child-arrangements order.