F (A Child : Placement Order: Proportionality)

Before approving adoption, the court must make an intense and proportionate evaluation of risk. It must identify the type of harm, its likelihood, its probable severity, and the extent to which available support can reduce or contain it. The court must then compare the welfare consequences of upbringing within the family and adoption, before deciding whether adoption is necessary and proportionate.

Lies and limited insight matter only insofar as they affect the child’s welfare, particularly by undermining protective arrangements. They must not displace analysis of the actual risk. An adoption order cannot stand where the evidence does not meet the exacting standard required for that most extreme intervention.

The mother appealed care and placement orders made by a Family Court judge concerning her 15-month-old son. The threshold for intervention, the judge’s legal self-direction, and his factual findings were not challenged.

The mother had cared well for the child and they had a strong attachment. However, she had concealed excessive alcohol use and contact with the father, whose behaviour involved domestic abuse, drug use and serious mental-health difficulties. After those matters emerged, the local authority changed its plan from supervision at home to adoption.

The judge found that the mother could not safely resume care within the child’s timescale and that adoption was the only realistic plan. The central issue was whether the risk evidence and the evaluation of available support justified adoption as a necessary and proportionate outcome.

1. Appeal allowed. The care and placement orders were set aside. An interim care order was substituted pending a rehearing before a different judge.

2. The Court accepted that an appellate court should be slow to disturb a specialist judge’s evaluative decision. It also accepted that the mother’s alcohol use, dishonesty and continuing contact with the father had exposed the child to a real risk of significant harm. However, those matters were not the whole picture. The child had been well cared for during the period at home, had a good attachment to his mother, and the mother had neither a serious mental illness nor an established alcohol addiction.

3. A placement order requires a focused assessment of the type of risk, its likelihood, and the probable consequences if it occurs. The court must also assess whether services and protective arrangements could reduce the risk to an acceptable level or provide warning before enduring harm occurs. It must compare the welfare advantages and disadvantages of family care and adoption, and then decide whether adoption is necessary and proportionate.

4. The judge had identified the type and likelihood of harm, but had not sufficiently addressed its likely severity, the effect of support and monitoring, or whether a care order and return home could provide further safeguards. He had not brought the competing welfare factors together in a comparative proportionality assessment. The evidence therefore did not meet the exacting standard required for orders leading to adoption.

5. Lies and lack of insight were relevant only to the extent that they affected welfare and undermined protective systems. They could not substitute for an explicit link between the mother’s conduct and the particular harm said to be likely. Although immediate return home was not shown to be safe, a placement order was not inevitable: a continued interim care order could have allowed necessary information, particularly from alcohol-support services, to be obtained under a tightly controlled timetable.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Allowed the mother’s appeal, set aside the care and placement orders, substituted an interim care order, and remitted the local authority’s applications for rehearing before a different judge.
• Family Court: HHJ Vavrecka made care and placement orders on 31 August 2018, approving a care plan for adoption.