England and Wales Family Court Decisions (other Judges)

IN THE PRESTON FAMILY COURT

		Sessions House Lancaster Road Preston Lancashire PR1 2PD
		23rd June 2017

HHJ DUGGAN:

1. This is the final hearing of the local authority's application for care and placement orders. The child with whom I am concerned is a boy who was born in late 2016. The child went to foster care from birth as a result of the extensive history, which included the placement of the parents' other children elsewhere, including the placement of two of the mother's previous children for adoption. The local authority's plan is that he should be placed for adoption with them. The parents oppose this plan and seek his placement in the mother's care. The parents' case is that they have now parted and this is at the very heart of the issue in this case.
2. I have decided that were he to be with his mother, he would not be protected from the father and from the likelihood of significant harm which the father brings. I have decided that there must be a care and placement orders and the purpose of this judgment is to explain how I have come to that conclusion.
3. The local authority have assembled the relevant material in a number of bundles. I have read the written evidence and my attention has been drawn to the relevant parts of the supporting material. I have heard oral evidence from three social workers, the father, the mother and the Children's Guardian.
4. In relation to the father, he has in the past been diagnosed as suffering from ADHD and from an antisocial personality disorder. He clearly finds stress to be very difficult and this has been manifested in his dealings with the professionals. On 27 April 2017 before the case was reallocated to me, there was trouble at the Family Court when the father was aggressive and threatening, which led to his conviction of public orders offences and the imposition of a suspended sentence.
5. The father prepared through solicitors a statement dated 24 May 2017, which conceded that the father's problems were such that the child could not live with him and that the father's contact would have to be supervised.
6. After reallocation, the case came before me for prehearing review on 15 June. At that hearing, the father retracted this part of his solicitor's statement and asserted that the child could live with him, albeit his first choice would be for him to be placed with the mother. The father dismissed his lawyers and since then has represented himself. At the prehearing review, he promised a new statement setting out his new case, but when this final hearing commenced, no new statement had appeared. When I enquired of the father what was his position, he explained that he did not in fact put himself forward as a carer for the child.
7. The major issue is whether the father's influence prevents placement with the mother. Predictably, the father was disruptive during the present hearing. On numerous occasions, he shouted out, including words of abuse and words of threat. These interventions made it very difficult for others to do their duty. The father certainly did not refrain from interrupting the mother's counsel and interrupting the mother in the course of her evidence. In two particularly disruptive incidents, I insisted that the father leave the courtroom and proceeded without him. This seemed to me an acceptable course, remembering that the father was not himself seeking to care for the child. After a short period of enforced absence, the father returned in a calmer frame of mind, but unhappily that was short-lived and it was necessary for him to be removed on a second occasion. Since the conclusion of the case, the father has sent a letter to the Court, a letter in very polite terms, explaining the difficulties under which he labours. I have closely considered the contents of that letter in reaching my conclusion.
8. The law I must apply is that the burden of proof rests with the local authority, who must prove their allegations on the balance of probabilities. They need to establish that the threshold under Section 31 is met, but in the course of argument, that was conceded and rightly so in the context of the history and the previous proceedings before the Court.
9. The welfare of the child is paramount. Since the plan is adoption, his welfare throughout his life is my paramount concern. I have at the forefront of my mind the welfare checklists, particularly the checklist under the 2002 Act. I will return to the applicable law in greater detail, but I remind myself that I should only approve a plan for adoption if nothing else will do.
10. Turning to the background, the mother had a particularly difficult upbringing in which she suffered abuse as a child. As a consequence, her mental health suffered. There were periods in which she became involved in drug abuse and in consuming excessive alcohol. Her two oldest children, born in 2011 and 2013, suffered neglect and they were exposed to the mother's inappropriate choice of partners. Those children were the subject of care proceedings and care and placement orders were made in March 2014.
11. The father's problems have already been mentioned in this judgment. I must add drug abuse and a criminal record, including prison sentences. He had another child in 2011. There were proceedings and that child lives with an aunt under a special guardianship order.
12. The mother and the father became a couple in 2014 and their first child together was born in October 2015. At about that time, the mother said she had separated from the father and she requested and obtained a placement in a mother and baby foster placement. In fact, it proved very difficult for the mother to achieve and maintain the separation. During a period of apparent separation, the mother became pregnant by the father and the child with whom I am now concerned is the child of their union.
13. In April 2016, when the mother was in the early stages of this pregnancy, she abandoned the mother and baby placement, leaving her child behind, and became openly reconciled with the father. Clearly, it was not realistic for the parents to contest that child's proceedings in that overall context and those proceedings were concluded in June 2016 by the granting of a special guardianship order to a paternal aunt, coupled with a supervision order to the relevant local authority.
14. The parents now assert that they separated finally in that June/July 2016 period. However, it is clear that there was trouble between them for the balance of 2016. The father was convicted in September 2016 of an offence of assault committed against the mother on 12 May 2016. In July 2016, the mother made further allegations of serious assault against the father. Those allegations were thought to be compelling. There were injuries consistent with what she was describing, but she retracted her complaint, which went no further.
15. There were call-outs to the police reporting trouble between the couple in September 2016 and November 2016 and a court order recites that this episode in November 2016 was an occasion on which the mother held a key to the father's premises, apparently a key given to her by him. This period is further evidence of the difficulty which Mother experienced in breaking away from her relationship with the father. This period undermines their assertion that they separated finally in June or July 2016.
16. Thereafter, the mother is entitled to point out that the record of trouble between them comes to an end. Her case is that the only dealings that she has had with the father in recent times relate to their exercise of contact with their children and have been kept at a civilised level.
17. I have the advantage of a lengthy, very comprehensive parenting assessment prepared by the local authority social worker. In relation to the father, the unchallenged conclusion is that his own issues prevent him from being an effective parent. His volatility would demand that any contact be supervised and childcare would be out of the question. I am acutely conscious of his mental health conditions. They have been manifest in his displays of anger, which have been seen throughout. The professionals have seen it regularly. There was a threat a couple of months ago addressed to the foster placement. I have referred already to incidents in court in April and this hearing was punctuated by manifestations of the father's anger difficulties.
18. He told me wistfully in a moment of insight that his condition was such that he said things that he does not mean. That is a compelling remark, but not a remark that makes it any easier for the mother, for a child or for the essential professionals to be able to coexist with him. The father has started treatment, which is a good thing. Manifestly, he has a long way to go. The mother has suffered domestic violence at his hands. He says that he will leave her alone to enable her to keep the child. This is of course the essential feature of the mother's case.
19. In the parenting assessment, the mother impressed. In contact, she was seen to be very warm and caring in her approach to the child. The social worker was clearly touched by what he saw. The mother was able to achieve a more stable pattern of life than she has for many years and albeit in refuge accommodation, she has been settled now for many months. Her alcohol issues have disappeared. Her use of drugs is now at a very much reduced level, a level that has no significance to my judgment. She is engaged in the Freedom Project and spoken knowingly of the issues about which she has learned.
20. All these factors were thought to reduce the risk of further exposure to domestic violence. It is fair to acknowledge in the mother's favour that this parenting assessment would have produced a recommendation of steps towards the rehabilitation to the mother's care, but for one thing. That was new evidence that the mother remained in contact with the father.
21. The parents say that they have separated. When they are in touch, they say it is confined to issues relevant to their contact with their children. It is important that I should analyse the evidence on which the local authority rely on this issue.
22. On 7 February 2017, the father was on the telephone with the Sefton social worker Emma Woodruff. She clearly heard the mother in the father's company, apparently in some distress, in the background of the telephone call.
23. On 24 March 2017, this social worker met the mother after some message had passed between them and the meeting point was outside the father's home. This seems to have been a convenience to both of them and no harm arose. However, in conversation with the social worker, the mother did then say that it was the parents' regular practice to meet up after their separate periods of contact with the older child. In these meetings, they shared their photographs and spoke of the child's progress. This is of course an indication of the exchanges which the parents were choosing to have.
24. On 29 March 2017, the parents were seen out walking together in the street. They have explained where they were going, but the important point is that the social worker who had seen them together asked them on the following day when they had last been together and neither of them mentioned this period walking together in the street on the previous day.
25. When the social worker challenged them about it, they both got upset. The father became argumentative. The mother's case is that she clean forgot about the previous day's meeting. The father is less clear. In the course of evidence, at one point, he said that when so challenged by the social worker, he decided to 'give the social worker shit'. In another section of the evidence, he said that he got confused, which I think means that he forgot. One thing is clear, that he was certainly very evasive in the course of his evidence on this topic, which must be considered against their hostile reaction when challenged on the subject by the social worker at the outset.
26. I have seen and heard both parents. It is clear that on this day, they were out together in circumstances of which they preferred Social Services to be unaware. This is why they kept silent when asked when last they met. This explains their reaction when they were caught out and this is why I have got a picture of a father being evasive on the subject.
27. The final sighting on which the local authority rely occurred on 30 May 2017 in the Preston shopping centre when they were seen together for about 10 minutes, including entering a shop together. Their account is that they bumped into one another in the shopping centre coincidentally, which I am prepared to accept. However their reaction after meeting up with one another is for me informative as to the nature of the exchanges which they choose. It is clear they did not immediately part. They remained together for this period of time.
28. In the course of the mother's assessment sessions, there were important periods with the social worker in January and February 2017. At face value, the mother impressed as to the need for her to avoid the harmful influence of the father. At E110 of the bundle, it reads:

'She says that they realised it would be better if they were just friends because they just argued and it would not be fair to a newborn child'.

29. In relation to maintaining a distance from Jordan in the future, she hopes that he will not come near because he knows that she would risk losing her baby and in any case, if he was to attempt to come round, she would call the police.
30. The evidence that I have heard drives me to the conclusion that the mother has not achieved the degree of separation which she was claiming in the course of that assessment and in her evidence. I recognise that it is difficult for a person in the mother's position to break free after a long period of abusive control, but it is clear that her assertions of success cannot be accepted.
31. An odd feature of the case is that the parents had contact one after another with the child, with professional supervisors present, and there developed a brief exchange between the parents about the first contact session, so the second parent would be told by the first whether the child had been fed, whether the child was to be changed, whether the child was on good form.
32. These exchanges were tolerated by the local authority, but I cannot accept the argument that this amounted to an encouragement for a wider relationship between the parents. The quotation that I have read from the parenting assessment makes it clear that the mother knew what was necessary if she was to be successful in securing the rehabilitation of the child to her care.
33. There is one further incident, which illuminates the picture. On 27 May 2017, the police were called to the mother's refuge accommodation where the staff reported that the father was outside demanding to be let in. He was reported to be shouting in a threatening fashion. It was said that his object was the mother, who had received abusive calls from him. She was reported to be safe in her flat, although distressed.
34. I have approached this evidence with the greatest caution. It has not been possible to hear directly from the refuge staff. I have only the documentation, which includes the police record of what the refuge staff said and an email from the refuge itself. Against that hearsay evidence, I have the direct evidence of the mother and the father. I have taken into account the obligation on the local authority to prove allegations on the balance of probabilities. Hearsay evidence is technically admissible, but admissible only if approached with caution and if an appropriate level of weight is attached to it.
35. The documents refer to a knife. The father says it was not his and I accept that proposition. If the identification of the father was an issue, it would be necessary to ponder what knowledge the refuge staff might have had of his identity and appearance. I note that the refuge staff looked on their CCTV coverage and failed to make an identification of the person shouting abuse outside the refuge.
36. However, the identity of the father is in fact not an issue. The father said, revealingly, in the course of his evidence, 'I was there, but I could say it was not me'. What he says is that he was not aware that these premises were the mother's refuge accommodation. His brother happens to live nearby and with his brother, he happened to be outside the refuge. He says that the shouting was started by a female resident in the refuge who shouted at his brother. Abuse was apparently exchanged and the father joined in the shouting of abuse directed to the unknown female resident.
37. I have heard the father give this account and I reject it as incredible. Even more incredible is the contention that the staff have misidentified the victim of this shouted abuse. The staff identified the victim to be their resident, the mother, but the parents' case is that they are wrong. The mother supports the father. She says she was not in residence at the time. She says that when the staff give an account of her being present, receiving calls, being distressed, that evidence is all wrong.
38. Now, of course, the contrary evidence from the staff is hearsay. I approach it with the necessary degree of caution. There seems to be no suggestion of any malicious motivation on the part of the refuge staff, so I am considering whether there has been a mistake in their identification of their resident.
39. I have seen and heard both Father and Mother and I reject their account. I find that the father did attend the mother's refuge. He must have discovered her whereabouts, which in itself is a serious finding. I find that he was then responsible for an angry threatening display. He wanted access to the mother. The mother was put to distress by his activities. Inherent in this finding is that the mother has tried to mislead and has colluded with the father as to his behaviour at the refuge. Contrary to her evidence, she was there. She was his victim and she is seeking to conceal what he did.
40. My analysis of all this evidence brings me to a conclusion which reflects the words from the guardian's report that the mother and the father are much more involved with an emotionally dependent relationship than they are prepared to admit. They choose to spend time together beyond the minimal time which they concede. Trouble continues to arise between them in the context of that time together, which I am afraid is inevitable in the context of Father's difficult problems. Mother protects Father by not telling the truth about this.
41. The mother has conducted her case on the basis that she will keep away from the father and that this will protect the child from the likelihood of significant harm to which the child would be exposed if she did not. This was the inevitable and correct way for the mother's case to be put. The father has serious problems of violence, anger and control. This has been seen over a long history and seen in this courtroom. The mother has suffered at his hands and she has struggled to break away from him. Like so many other victims, she has not found that to be easy.
42. My conclusion is that it would be necessary that she achieve that breaking away. Otherwise there would be a very high level of likelihood that a child in her care would suffer significant harm at a high level. This likelihood of significant harm is inherent in the level of domestic abuse with which we are concerned in this case.
43. Following authority, I am cautious with threshold findings based upon a likelihood rather than proved actual significant harm, but here the father's behaviour is clearly proved. His behaviour clearly has been proved to be harmful to the mother and has already been the basis for the loss of older children.
44. My findings mean that the mother has not been able to break away and the consequence is that the local authority have established an unacceptably high likelihood of significant harm. It follows that the statutory threshold is met.
45. The local authority seek a placement order in order to implement their care plan for adoption. Of course, parental consent is not forthcoming, so the local authority apply to dispense with parental consent on the statutory ground that the welfare of the child requires it. The word 'requires' connotes a high level of necessity at a level in which the welfare of the child demands it.
46. The local authority must satisfy a high test. My paramount concern is the welfare of the child throughout his life. In principal, a child is best with members of the family unless overriding requirements of welfare make that impossible. Adoption should only be approved if it is necessary and proportionate, if nothing else will do.
47. In this case, there are effectively three options for consideration. There are no alternatives within the family. The options are adoption, long-term foster care and return to the mother's care. Taking adoption first of all, adoption clearly has disadvantages. It breaks all ties between the child and his parents and his non-adopted siblings. Sometimes adoptions fail. In this case, there is a place available for him with siblings in a proved adoptive placement, so I suppose his prospects are as good as any. Nevertheless, the teenage years lie ahead when adoptive placements come under pressure when issues of identity and the like come to the fore.
48. The advantage which adoption can offer is of course a safe placement, but also the stability and permanence which only full membership of a carer's family can bring. In this case, an advantage is to be derived from the proposed placement with his two already adopted maternal half-siblings.
49. Foster care is a theoretical possibility. It would be safe. It would preserve family ties. However, foster care would be a poor outcome for a child so young as this. It would lack the permanence and stability which only adoption can bring.
50. A return to the mother would carry the advantage of keeping the child in the natural family. However, by my findings, the child would be exposed to an unacceptably high likelihood of significant harm originating with the father. My finding is that the mother will not and cannot break away in order to protect him.
51. In argument, it has been suggested that the mother's care could be buttressed by a care order, by injunction order, by other forms of state input. My analysis concludes that these would not be remotely effective. The father would not comply and the mother could not be relied upon to enforce.
52. Turning to the welfare checklist, I have dealt already with the need for safety, the likelihood of harm and the parents' qualities. The remaining relevant paragraphs seem to me to be paragraph C and F. Under paragraph C, the effect of adoption will be the loss of family ties and heritage, but there will be the counterbalancing gain arising from full membership of a new family where the child's needs can be met.
53. Under paragraph F, the child has a contact relationship with the mother and the father. It is a warm relationship, albeit limited to the contact environment. The parents would of course like this relationship to continue. There is no doubt that they would attend, although recent events have caused their attendance to drop off a little. The problem of course is that they cannot meet the child's need for safety. The value of this contact relationship is therefore limited. Indeed, it is less important for the child than the new relationships which the child must form with new carers who can meet his needs. In this context, the old relationships represent an obstacle for him to the making of new relationships and their cementation. One advantage for the child is the proposal that he be placed with half-siblings, with whom also he must form a relationship.
54. Making the child's welfare throughout this life my paramount concern, I am clearly of the view that adoption is the only viable outcome. There are indeed overriding requirements of welfare, which dictate this outcome. Nothing else will do. This extreme outcome is proportionate to the level of risk which I identify to be present in the case and therefore the test I set myself as to whether adoption was necessary and proportionate is clearly met.
55. The application to dispense with parental consent is granted because it is clear to me that the welfare of the child requires in the sense of demands that there should be a placement for adoption, which requires consent to be dispensed with.
56. The Act requires me to consider contact. The local authority's plan is an entirely conventional plan for direct contact to be replaced with indirect contact. Clearly, direct contact would undermine the plan, which I have no hesitation in approving. No contact order is needed. My conclusion is that a placement order is both necessary and proportionate as the only means of addressing the child's welfare throughout his lifetime.
57. I have distributed in draft the order which I propose. It contains in abbreviated form the important findings that I have made, together I think with the legal consequences.
End of Judgment

Approved 12/10/17

RD