ADA (Children: Care and Placement Orders)

A decision leading to adoption requires a rigorous evaluation of every realistic option for the child’s future. The court must identify the nature, likelihood and consequences of possible harm in a family placement, consider measures capable of reducing or mitigating that harm, and compare the advantages and disadvantages of each option.

Adoption is permissible only where it serves the child’s lifelong welfare and constitutes a necessary and proportionate interference with family life. In a finely balanced case, disputed allegations and the strengths of a proposed family placement require focused findings and explanation. Generalised concerns cannot sustain the conclusion that adoption is the only viable outcome.

The Family Court made care orders for four siblings. It also made a placement order for the youngest child, D, rejecting her parents and her maternal aunt and uncle as carers. The mother appealed in respect of B, C and D. B appealed against her care order, and D’s father appealed against D’s care and placement orders.

The appeals concerning B and C challenged the treatment of a culturally informed parenting assessment, the significance attached to the mother’s continued denial of findings of abuse, and the assessment of the children’s wishes and the risks of returning home. The appeals concerning D challenged whether adoption had been shown to be necessary and proportionate, particularly when no professional assessment had focused specifically on placing D alone with her aunt and uncle.

1. Appeals concerning B and C dismissed. The trial judge was entitled to prefer the longstanding social worker’s evidence to the culturally informed parenting assessment. The latter had accepted too readily the mother’s account of physical punishment and had paid insufficient attention to the findings of abuse. There was no rule that rehabilitation depended on total acceptance of those findings. Continued denial was nevertheless relevant because it increased the risk of repetition and contradicted the children’s serious accounts. Read as a whole, the judgment adequately established that returning B and C was not physically or emotionally safe while the underlying problems remained insufficiently addressed.

2. Appeals concerning D allowed. A decision leading to adoption requires rigorous evaluation and comparison of all realistic options. The court must identify the nature and likelihood of harm in a family placement, its possible consequences, and the steps capable of reducing the risk or mitigating its effects. It must then compare the welfare advantages and disadvantages of that placement, adoption, and every other realistic alternative. Adoption may be approved only where it is in the child’s lifelong best interests and is a necessary and proportionate interference with family life.

3. The trial judgment did not sufficiently identify or evaluate the alleged risks of placing D with her aunt and uncle. Disputed concerns about collusion, fear-based parenting, the aunt’s motivation and the family’s ability to meet D’s emotional needs required focused findings. The court also failed adequately to examine protective measures, professional support, or the substantial benefits of maintaining D within a family that had strengths and no forensic history. The absence of a professional assessment directed specifically to placing D alone with those relatives added to the difficulty.

4. The deficiencies extended beyond the expression of reasons to the adequacy and focus of the assessment itself. Supplementary reasons would therefore have been inappropriate. The care and placement orders for D were set aside, an interim care order was substituted, and the applications were remitted for reallocation, directions and an early rehearing. The Court of Appeal expressed no view about the proper outcome of that rehearing.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): The appeals concerning B and C were dismissed. The appeals concerning D were allowed. D’s care and placement orders were set aside, an interim care order was substituted, and the applications were remitted for reallocation and an early rehearing: [2023] EWCA Civ 743.
• Family Court at Chelmsford: Her Honour Judge Shanks made care orders for all four children and a placement order for D. She also ordered sibling contact under section 26 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002.