England and Wales County Court (Family)

IN THE STOKE-ON-TRENT COUNTY COURT

		Bethesda Street Hanley Stoke-on-Trent ST1 3BP
		25th February 2014

1. THE JUDGE: This is the final hearing of the Local Authority's applications. In relation to the child, T, born on 6^th February 2009, the Local Authority now propose a residence order to the paternal grandmother. In relation to the child, H, born on 19^th April 2011, the Local Authority pursue their application for care and placement orders.
2. These two children of the same mother C, have different fathers. H's father is SE. He does not have parental responsibility. It has not been possible to trace him within these proceedings. T's father is LM, who attended the issues resolution hearing last week and indicated his support for the continuing placement of his child with his parents. The Local Authority's plan enjoys the support of the children's guardian. The mother seeks the return of both children to her care. They were removed in September 2013, H to foster care, T to the grandmother. The mother is in fact very pleased with the care that T receives with the grandmother. Understandably, she expresses the preference for the two children to be together in her care, but she speaks not one word of criticism of the grandmother. The mother is in fact pregnant, expecting her third child in April of this year.
3. The relevant material has been assembled in a bundle, the contents of which I have read. I have had oral evidence from the Local Authority's social worker, the mother and the children's guardian. The Local Authority, of course, bear the burden of proving their case and the requisite standard is the balance of probabilities. In fact, it is agreed in this case that the threshold is met in the terms of a document in my papers. For both children then, the issue is what their welfare requires and I shall start with the position of H.
4. The Local Authority seek to place H for adoption, which is, of course, a draconian outcome of last resort. Under the 2002 Act, I make H's welfare throughout his life my paramount concern. The high point of the case is the inevitable application to dispense with parental consent to place him for adoption. The statutory test is whether the welfare of the child requires (in the sense of demands) that this should take place. Expressed in different language, I have to be persuaded that adoption is the necessary and proportionate outcome in all the circumstances.
5. The relevant factors can be stated briefly. The mother can meet the basic needs of her children. She has no issues as to drink or drugs or mental illness. Caring for three young children would, I am sure, be a major challenge but she would be entitled to receive help. However, the psychological assessment in this case tells us that mother is at the lower end of the borderline range of intelligence. At E27, we are told that Miss C presents as a very naïve, trusting and gullible individual who has been vulnerable to men who have offered her no practical, emotional or financial support. Miss C fully admits that she has been desperate for friendships and her way to secure a relationship has been to have sex with men. At E32, after listing a number areas of recommended work, the psychological continues:

'The timescales will depend on the availability of the recommended work. The author suggests a matter of months rather than years. However, it will be her ability to translate the theory this time into practice, which will demonstrate if she were able to change and whether she can develop the risk prediction skills, assertion and confidence to safeguard the children in the future. Until the work recommended was completed, and there was evidence to suggest she has developed enhanced risk prediction skills, she is likely to continue to be vulnerable to people that present a risk of harm or are willing to use her for sexual purposes.

The final quotation to which I draw attention is:

'If she did not develop the skills, there is a probability that the children may experience a number of new men in their lives over time. Given Miss C's current presentation, the author is not confident that she has the ability to keep the children safe from harm. However, with the interventions recommended in addition to an increased support network, she may be in a better position.'

6. Those opinions must be understood alongside the factual background to this case. In 2010 mother was content to bring T into contact with her Uncle D, a man with serious convictions for sexual offences. When challenged, she did not believe that he represented a threat. Eventually, she was persuaded to put distance between T and D and the Local Authority withdrew. In 2012, mother once more had this time two children living under the same roof as D. Again when challenged, she could not accept the threat. Eventually, she was persuaded to participate in the McEwan Project. She completed that specialist intervention designed to address the salient issue and was able to persuade the authorities that she had learned an appropriate approach. In August 2013, the mother brought her children into contact with M B and his girlfriend. M B was due to be tried by the local Crown Court on sexual offences of the most serious order but, once again, mother had difficulty understanding the problem.
7. The evidence shows that mother has been rather inconsistent on the issue, but there is evidence that she has accepted that she was the recipient of affection herself from Mr B. The children have complained against him, H complaining that he was hurt, T complaining of a game capable only of a sexual connotation. It seems that mother became conscious that the children were returning to her from Mr B and his girlfriend showing injuries and it is clear that she allowed the children out of her care with these individuals.
8. The only possible conclusion is that mother has to change her approach to the protection of her children. This needs extensive work. It is inconceivable that the children could be home with the mother before these pieces of work were concluded and are proved to have been effective. The case, therefore, must take seriously into account the timescale this entails.
9. The mother has a particularly unhappy background, suffering bereavement as a child and she has unresolved problems of grief. There are problems for mother making and retaining satisfactory relationships. To her credit, she is seeking and engaging with help with these topics but, as the guardian advises me, we are very early on the road. The fundamental problem is mother's propensity to engage with abusive friends. Experience shows that she is so anxious to retain these flawed friendships that she is prepared to tolerate on behalf of her children an unacceptable degree of risk. The proposal with which no one dissents is that mother should benefit again from the kind of specialist input the McEwan Project was designed to provide some twelve or so months ago.
10. Mother says now that she did not understand the work of the Project. In the light of the subsequent cognitive assessment from the psychologist, the mother derives a degree of support for that proposition, which is relevant to the proposal that she participate once more. On close analysis, it is clear that the McEwan Project was not completely lost on the mother first time round. Clearly, the workers had some appreciation of her limitations. For example, it is clear that when a questionnaire came to be completed she received assistance from a worker in that task. The McEwan Project itself reported back to the Local Authority in positive terms as to the mother's engagement, progress and result and after the course mother engaged with the Local Authority workers who discussed the topics and were persuaded that mother now understood things that she had not understood previously. Mother's actions since attending the McEwan Project, I am afraid, tell a different story.
11. It is, of course, unfortunate that those embarking upon the McEwan Project were not equipped with the cognitive assessment and the recommendations that it contains. However, mother told me candidly from the witness box that she learnt a bit from the course. Her engagement on the course and subsequently, confirmed to professionals that this was the case. In the circumstances, my conclusion is that I would be wrong to treat this engagement with the McEwan Project as null and void, to treat the whole exercise as invalid and to disregard it on the basis of unfairness, whatever the consequences. There was benefit, but mother clearly needs more.
12. Therefore, repetition is agreed. In September, this specialist course is available again. My enquiries reveal that another Local Authority in the Midlands perceived a gap in provision for those in the mother's predicament and set up this specialist course, which fills a gap in provision across a large area of the country. The Local Authority have the opportunity to buy places for their local residents and this is what the Local Authority did last year and what the Local Authority are prepared to do again for the mother. Delay is obviously a major problem in this case and, recognising this, the Local Authority have researched alternatives. I am told that the NSPCC offer nothing of this kind and the combined experience of the Local Authority workers and lawyers and those representing mother and the children have not been able to identify a readily available alternative source of this essential input. This means that the plan inevitably involves a twelve-week course for the mother commencing in September.
13. Unfortunately, even the twelve weeks commencing in September is not the end of the story. Clearly, the history indicates that mother has been advised many times before in relation to this topic without implementing the advice. Therefore, the court would insist that there be time after the completion of the course for its lessons to sink in and for there to be assessment of the extent to which mother has been able to implement the change that the course is designed to bring. In this context, I am readily persuaded that the twelve-month period mentioned by the guardian in evidence is the kind of period that we are facing in this case. In relation to alternative sources of assistance, I must determine the case on the evidence. I cannot determine the case on an optimistic pious hope that something might be found on a more attractive timescale. Of course, mother is entitled to the assistance the state can offer, but in a specialist area of this kind, I am persuaded that no realistic alternative is before me.
14. H has been in foster care now for five months. He is soon to attain his third birthday. In that context, I am afraid the proposal to adjourn the case for twelve months is unattractive in the extreme. There is no certainty that the mother would succeed even at the end of that period. The evidence before me is that placement at the present time is perceived to be straightforward for young H. In another twelve months, he will be more deeply enmeshed in his short-term foster placement. Inevitably, he will be harder to move, harder to settle in an alternative placement and inevitably a candidate for whom it will be more difficult to find appropriate adoptive carers.
15. Under the checklist, he needs a secure, safe placement. The risk of harm in the mother's care is self-evident based upon the factual history in recent times. Of course, he has a good relationship with his mother through the exercise of contact in recent months and through residence in her care before that, but if mother cannot meet his needs, the value of that continuing relationship is limited. Instead, the new relationships which the child can form with alternative carers who are able to meet his needs is of great significance and a continuing relationship with the mother represents a barrier to the making and cementation of those new relationships. Adoption, of course, involves the child ceasing to be a member of the biological family, but it carries with it a counterbalancing advantage through full membership of the family who are able to meet his needs.
16. The realistic options seem to be these: adoption, foster care or adjournment for twelve months in order to give further consideration to return to mother's care. Starting with adoption, the disadvantages are obvious. Placement in the birth family is to be preferred unless overriding requirements of welfare make that impossible. Adoptions can fail, they can break down and there can be identity issues in the teenage years. These problems are minimised the younger a placement for adoption can be achieved. On the other hand, the advantage that adoption can bring is safe, permanent, secure care, free from the risks of harm inherent in mother's recent history.
17. Foster care carries with it the advantage that the child could maintain a relationship with the birth family, but the disadvantage is in my judgment an overwhelming one, which is the lack of permanence and security for a child of this young age. It would seem a poor outcome for a child approaching his third birthday to face a future in long-term foster care.
18. Adjournment to consider return to mother, of course, retains the advantage that family relationships can remain, but the disadvantage is the uncertainty of success, coupled with the very detrimental impact of the twelve-month delay that is entailed. Welfare is paramount and in my judgment that twelve-month delay for a child not yet 3 years old is too long. If there could be a certainty of successful progress for the mother, the prospect might be more attractive but with the inherent uncertainty this is not so.
19. I am driven to the conclusion that nothing else but adoption will do. The harm involved in repeated exposure by the mother to abusive friends is at a very severe level. In my judgment, adoption is proportionate to that level of identified risk.
20. Returning then to the test I must apply under the 2002 Act, it is clear to me that the welfare of the child does require placement for adoption and it does require me to dispense with parental consent to placement for adoption. Applying the paramountcy principle, I grant the Local Authority the care order. Before granting a placement order, the Act requires me to consider contact. The proposal is an entirely conventional one for indirect contact with mother and sibling. Direct contact, I am afraid, would be detrimental to the finding and success of the proposed adoptive placement. In those circumstances, it is clear to me that H's welfare throughout his life will be best served by the granting of the placement order sought.
21. I turn finally to T. For her, the alternatives are placement with grandmother or return to mother. The very factors to which I have already referred at length mean that it is not possible for a child to be in the mother's care for the foreseeable future. In T's case, the balance is even clearer in that she has the advantage of remaining in the birth family, she has the advantage of continuing contact with mother, she is safe and, of course, a residence order does not have the permanent legal consequences which adoption would bring. All the welfare factors drive me to the conclusion that T should be the subject of a residence order in favour of the grandmother.
22. There is an issue concerning contact. Mother has exercised contact with T twice a week hitherto. The Local Authority's medium term plan is for contact to be reduced to a monthly frequency. Mother would like contact to continue preferably every week. Mother is able to draw attention to the fact that contact is enjoyable for all concerned. Those issues that there have been have been small and relatively manageable. However, the important point is that T must now understand for the first time that her permanent future is with the grandmother rather than with the mother. Residence with grandmother is not new and grandmother played an important part even before September 2013 but since then she has been acting as a temporary carer. The message now needs to be understood by T that this is a permanent arrangement. Roots must go down and she must understand what her future entails. I am persuaded that an important element of this is a significant curtailing of the existing contact. The current contact carries with it expectations of a return to the old regime. I am afraid this is not the case and reducing contact is justified.
23. The Local Authority suggested monthly, the guardian was perhaps a little more generous than that, but there was no professional support for contact at the level for which mother contends. Everybody anticipates that with grandmother in charge there is going to be some flexibility in relation to this contact with extra contact in holiday times and periods of celebration. The grandmother herself is going to be in the best position to decide what this should be. What I propose to do is accept the guardian's advice that contact should be not less than monthly, providing the grandmother, therefore, with an argument that she can use in the event of disagreement with the mother, but at the same time inviting grandmother to use her best judgment so far as the contact regime is concerned.
[Judgment ends]

Approved 12/3/14

RD