F (Children: Placement Orders: Proportionality), Re

A placement order requires a holistic, evidence-based welfare and proportionality assessment. The court must assess the likelihood and consequences of future harm, the realistic scope for reducing or managing risk, and the comparative welfare effects of all realistic options.

A finding of substantial future risk does not alone make adoption necessary. The court must relate the likely harm to the evidence and consider whether state safeguarding measures, including measures under the Children Act 1989, can support children within their family. Risk assessment is not an exercise in eliminating every risk. Permanent separation is lawful only where the strict requirements of necessity and proportionality are met.

The Family Court at Cardiff made care and placement orders for two young children following findings of inflicted bruising to the younger child, serious domestic abuse by the father towards the mother, and sustained parental dishonesty that impeded child-protection assessment.

The children had always lived with their mother and were strongly attached to her. The judge found that the mother could not protect them from future risks, that external protective measures would not work, and that adoption was necessary and proportionate.

The mother appealed, supported by the father. She challenged both the process of the welfare evaluation and the necessity and proportionality of adoption. The central issue was whether the likely future harm in parental care outweighed the certain harm of removal and whether safeguarding could realistically reduce the risks within the family.

1. Appeal allowed. The care and placement orders were set aside. The interim care orders revived, while the threshold findings remained preserved. The case was remitted to the Family Court for a final welfare determination.
2. The challenge to procedure did not establish a serious irregularity causing injustice. The staged judgments created a risk that sequential findings about acceptance, insight and risk could become substitutes for the global welfare assessment. However, read together, the judgments did not show that the judge had impermissibly ruled out maternal care before the final hearing.
3. Applying Re J (A Child) [2005] UKHL 40 and Re H-W (Children) [2022] UKSC 17, the appellate court could interfere because the welfare and proportionality assessment was inadequate or wrong. A court considering family separation must identify the nature and likelihood of harm, its probable consequences, the scope for reducing risk, the comparative welfare effects of the options, and the necessity and proportionality of any interference with Article 8 rights.
4. The judge was entitled to find a substantial possibility of further significant harm if the children lived with the mother in the community. That conclusion was not decisive. There was insufficient focus on the realistically likely consequences of future injury and domestic abuse for these children. The evidence did not justify treating the most extreme possible outcomes as probable, and the court had to weigh that risk against the certain disruption and emotional harm caused by separation, foster care and a possible later move to adopters.
5. The judge also gave insufficient consideration to measures that might support the children within their family. These included supervisory or coercive measures under the Children Act 1989, a Domestic Abuse Protection Order under the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, and coordinated voluntary support. Adoption cannot be justified merely to eliminate any possibility of undetected domestic abuse. The strict standard described in Re B (A Child) (Care Proceedings: Threshold Criteria) [2013] UKSC 33 was not met.
6. Lord Justice Dingemans, with whom Lord Justice Edis expressly agreed, additionally stressed the importance of liaison between the Family Court and immigration tribunals where immigration status may bear on family welfare. Immigration proceedings should not automatically await the Family Court outcome.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division) — Allowed the mother's appeal, set aside the care and placement orders, revived the interim care orders, and remitted the matter for a fresh final welfare determination: [2026] EWCA Civ 990 .
• Family Court at Cardiff — On 7 May 2026, made care and placement orders, dispensing with parental consent, on the basis that adoption was necessary and proportionate.