Re: B-P (Children) [Adoption or Fostering]

When choosing between adoption and long-term foster care, the court must undertake an individualised welfare assessment for each child. It must weigh adoption’s potential benefits, including commitment, security and permanence, against the disadvantages of long-term fostering. Those matters must be balanced with sibling relationships, family contact and possible separation. Evidence about each child must be carried into the final evaluation; reciting legal principles is insufficient. Short- and medium-term considerations must not eclipse long-term and lifelong welfare. Conclusions that adoption would be harmful, or that foster care should continue throughout childhood, require adequate evidential and analytical support. A materially incomplete assessment may justify allowing an appeal and remitting the welfare decision for urgent rehearing.

The local authority appealed from orders made by Recorder Clark in the Family Court at Stoke-on-Trent. After excluding the parents as carers and making care orders for all five children, the recorder refused placement orders for the three youngest sisters and directed that they remain together in foster care throughout childhood. The local authority argued that the welfare assessment failed to evaluate each child individually, omitted adoption’s benefits and fostering’s disadvantages, overstated the value of family contact, and placed undue weight on the absence of a guaranteed joint adoptive placement. The parents opposed the appeal and the Children’s Guardian supported it. The central issue was whether the choice between adoption and long-term fostering had been adequately assessed.

1. Appeal allowed. The recorder’s welfare decision could not stand. He gave no weight to the potential benefits of adoption, including commitment, security and permanence, and did not confront the potential drawbacks of long-term foster care.
2. Decisions concerning sibling groups where adoption may involve separation require careful assessment of often dissimilar factors. The court must balance short- and medium-term considerations against long-term and lifelong considerations. The latter must not be eclipsed by the former. Although an appellate court is slow to interfere with a considered welfare decision, intervention is required where material considerations have been omitted.
3. The recorder summarised evidence about each child but failed to carry it into the final evaluation. Individual consideration was indispensable, particularly for the youngest child. The court needed to address the consequences of long-term fostering, the absence of legal membership in the foster family, the purpose and effect of continuing parental contact, and the effect of possible separation from siblings and wider family.
4. The recorder also expected too much evidence about the availability of adoptive placements, since such evidence may be unavailable before placement orders are made. Conversely, he appeared to assume that the foster placement would continue throughout the children’s minorities, although that could not be guaranteed. His conclusions that adoption would be harmful and that long-term fostering would remain appropriate even if the foster carers withdrew required substantially more evidential and analytical support.
5. The court declined to substitute placement orders. The issue had not received sufficient attention at trial, involved high individual needs and possible sibling separation, and should be considered urgently and afresh by a different judge. A focused psychological report was favoured in the particular circumstances, although further expert evidence would not usually be necessary.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Allowed the local authority’s appeal, declined to substitute placement orders, and remitted the welfare issue for urgent rehearing by a different judge.
• Family Court at Stoke-on-Trent: Recorder Clark made care orders for all five children but refused placement orders for the three youngest children, directing that they remain in long-term foster care.