Warwickshire County Council v The Mother & Ors

In cases involving alleged parental alienation, courts should avoid treating the label as determinative. The assessment must remain fact-specific and focused on the child’s welfare, including the child’s autonomy, wishes and feelings, particularly as the child becomes older. A change in the child’s home is not automatically a last resort, but any muscular intervention must be carefully assessed against the likely effect on the child and the proportionality of interference with Article 8 rights. The court must choose the best available welfare solution even where no option is wholly satisfactory, while recognising that litigation and delay may entrench parental conflict and harm children.

This was the final hearing in public law proceedings concerning two sisters and allegations of parental alienation. The children had previously been made subject to interim care orders, and an earlier fact-finding decision had made findings against the mother. A reunification plan placing the children with the father had failed. One child had returned to the mother; the other later left the father’s care and remained with relatives.

By the final hearing, the parties agreed that the older child should be subject to no order and that the younger child should be made subject to a care order living with the relatives, with increased sibling contact, a plan for contact with the father, parenting work and therapeutic support. The central issue was whether those arrangements best served the children’s welfare.

1. Orders. The court accepted the agreed arrangements. The older child was made subject to no order and a Child in Need plan. The younger child was made subject to a care order and was to live with the relatives. Provision was made for increased contact with her sister and the sister’s half-siblings, a plan for contact with the father, parenting work and therapeutic interventions.
2. Applicable approach. Under Children Act 1989, s.31(2), the threshold criteria were met. The paramount consideration was the children’s welfare, assessed by reference to the welfare checklist. The court considered the guidance in Re S [Parental Alienation] [2020] EWCA Civ 568, but stressed that parental alienation is a highly fact-specific situation in which labels and generalisations are unhelpful.
3. Children are autonomous people with their own feelings and perceptions. As they grow older, their wishes and feelings normally carry greater weight. The court must therefore consider carefully whether substantial intervention against their wishes is justified and proportionate under Article 8. Although changing a child’s home is not automatically a last resort, the court must select the best welfare solution in the circumstances.
4. The court recognised that there may be no good solution. It cannot rewrite the past and has only limited influence over the future. The effectiveness of intervention must be judged by its likely impact on the children, including the risk that adversarial litigation, delay and attempts to force relationships may become counterproductive.
5. On the evidence, both children had consistently expressed the wish to live with the mother and maintain their sibling relationship. The younger child’s placement with the relatives, together with increased sibling contact and therapeutic and parenting work, was the most appropriate available arrangement. The court hoped that contact with the father could be restored, but left the detail and progression of contact to the local authority’s plan.