Lincolnshire County Council v M & Ors

In care and placement proceedings, adoption is permissible only where the child’s welfare throughout life requires it and nothing else will do. The court must evaluate all realistic options holistically, including care by a parent, supported placements and long-term foster care. It must consider the assistance reasonably available from public authorities and weigh both benefits and risks, without treating one advantage as decisive. A parent’s basic parenting ability may be outweighed by an inability to protect the child from serious and continuing domestic-abuse risks. Planned delay may be appropriate only where it has a realistic welfare purpose. The court must also ensure that any interference with family life is necessary and proportionate.

Lincolnshire County Council sought care and placement orders for AB, an infant whose parents had travelled abroad before her birth after earlier care proceedings involving the mother’s older children and CD. AB was returned to England following cooperation between the English and Belgian authorities and remained in foster care.

The father accepted that he could not care for AB and was living in Australia. The central issues were whether the father continued to pose a serious risk, whether the mother could protect AB from that risk, whether the parents’ separation was genuine and sustainable, and whether adoption, return to the mother, or continued foster care best promoted AB’s welfare.

1. Threshold. The local authority established the threshold under s.31(2) of the Children Act 1989. The father continued to present a serious risk of physical and emotional harm through aggression, intimidation, violence, coercive control, manipulation and drug misuse. The mother remained unable to protect AB from that risk. Subsequent events were admissible insofar as they demonstrated the position at the relevant date, applying Re G (Care Proceedings: Threshold Conditions) [2001] 2 FLR 1111.
2. The court considered the hearsay evidence in the local-authority records and other materials, giving it appropriate weight under s.96.3 of the Children (Admissibility of Hearsay Evidence) Order 1993, applying Re W (Fact Finding: Hearsay Evidence) [2014] 2 FLR 703.
3. Welfare and adoption. Applying s.1 of the Children Act 1989 and the welfare checklist in s.1(4) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, the court undertook a holistic evaluation of every realistic option. The welfare assessment had to address the child’s whole life, the effects of delay, family relationships, attachment and the risks associated with each placement.
4. The principles in Re B (A Child) (Care Proceedings: Threshold Criteria) [2013] UKSC 33, Re B-S (Adoption: Application of s.47(5)) [2013] EWCA Civ. 1146 and Re M-H (a child) [2014] EWCA Civ 1396 required proper consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of all realistic alternatives. The phrase nothing else will do was not a direction to prefer adoption whenever it offered benefits, but required welfare to demand adoption in exceptional circumstances.
5. Return to the mother, including with protective orders or in a mother-and-baby setting, was not realistic because of the high risk of renewed involvement with the father. Continued foster care would defer the decision without a sufficiently realistic prospect of successful change and risked later disruption of AB’s primary attachment. Long-term foster care was inferior to a permanent family.
6. The court concluded that adoption was necessary and proportionate, that nothing else would do, and that the parents’ consent should be dispensed with under s.52(1)(b) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002. A care order and placement order were made.

This was a first-instance decision. The judgment records earlier care proceedings and hearings in the Family Court, but no appeal from the present decision.