P (A Child)

In care and placement proceedings, a short adjournment may have a real purpose where a parent has made substantial, evidence-based progress and the further period would test whether that progress can be sustained within the child’s timescale. Historic dishonesty is important, but must be weighed against genuine current change and not treated as determinative without proper analysis.

A placement order requires the child’s welfare to require dispensing with parental consent. That threshold must be addressed expressly and by reference to all the circumstances. Adoption was disproportionate where the evidence justified further assessment and the child’s attachment timescale was not shown to make a six-month delay decisive.

The mother appealed against an order made by Her Honour Judge Probyn in the Croydon Family Court on 1 February 2018. The order refused her application for a six-month adjournment and made final care and placement orders for her seven-month-old daughter, L, whose care proceedings had begun at birth and whose care plan was adoption.

The mother had a long history of alcoholism and previous dishonesty about her drinking. By the final hearing, however, she had been abstinent for 13 months, was engaging actively with treatment and Alcoholics Anonymous, and had developed insight into her condition and its effect on her children. Uncontested psychiatric evidence gave a more favourable, though cautious, prognosis if she maintained progress for a further six months. The central issues were whether an adjournment served a proper evidential purpose within L’s timescale and whether L’s welfare required the severance of her relationship with her mother by a placement order.

1. Appeal allowed. The order was set aside. An interim care order was made and the matter was listed urgently for directions before the Family Division Liaison Judge covering the Croydon area.
2. The judge placed excessive weight on the mother’s historic lies and treated them as effectively determinative. She failed to set those serious concerns against the mother’s genuine and significant progress, including sustained abstinence, active engagement with support, and developing insight.
3. The proposed adjournment had a clear purpose. It would test continued sobriety, engagement with treatment and Alcoholics Anonymous, personality stability, and whether the mother could develop an honest working relationship with the local authority. That relationship was material to whether a future relapse could be managed.
4. The court distinguished an application for a defined, evidence-based period of assessment from an indeterminate request for therapy which had not begun and might take years. There was a sufficient prospect that the mother could make the necessary changes within L’s reasonable timescales.
5. The structured approach identified in Re S Child [2014] EWHC supported an adjournment. The evidence showed commitment to change, a basis for believing that the commitment could be maintained, and a solid prospect of making the necessary changes within L’s timescale.
6. The judge also erred in treating risks of emotional and physical harm on rehabilitation and possible attachment harm from delay as decisive at the adjournment stage. There was no evidence that L had suffered attachment damage. Her good-quality contact with the mother four times a week was a material consideration.
7. A placement order could not be justified without proper analysis of whether L’s welfare required dispensing with parental consent. The Court of Appeal could not conclude that L’s welfare required the immediate breaking of all ties with her mother and full sister. The placement order was disproportionate.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): allowed the mother’s appeal against the order made on 1 February 2018.
• Croydon Family Court: Her Honour Judge Probyn refused a six-month adjournment and made final care and placement orders for L, with an adoption care plan.