England and Wales County Court (Family)

1.

This is a very sad case.  Both the mother and the child have had unfortunate starts in life.  The mother herself had a deficient upbringing.  She was smoking and drinking before she was in her teens.  She had no schooling beyond the age of eleven.  No boundaries appear to have been put in place, and at the age of fourteen she became a mother.  She had little family support, none from the father of the child and almost none from the Social Services Department of the region she then lived in.

2.

As a consequence, her child, who I shall call L, spent his early months with a mother who had had no satisfactory example set for her by her own mother and who simply was not equipped to take on such a demanding task.  There is no doubt that L suffered as a result and the emotional damage that he sustained until his removal to foster care at the age of 17 months has left him with behavioural problems and developmental delay.

3.

The proceedings started in March 2009 and the applications by the local authority are for both a care order and a placement order because the care plan has now crystallised into one for adoption.  L is now nearly two and a half years old and he has been in foster care for the past twelve months.  He was removed from his mother after staff in the hostel where she was then living, having been ejected from her mother’s home, reported that her care of L was simply not good enough and that L was suffering significant harm.

4.

That is something which the mother has recognised by conceding that the threshold set by section 31(2) of the Children Act 1989 was crossed by the time that the local authority intervened to put protective measures into place.  The local authority composite threshold criteria document, which the mother has signed, sets this out clearly.  It says that at the relevant date, which is the date when protective measures were put in place, L was “at risk of suffering significant harm and the likelihood of harm was attributable to the care given to the child, or likely to be given to the child, if an order were not made, not being what it would be reasonable to expect the parent to give to him.”  Furthermore, at that date L was suffering significant harm by reason of neglect of his physical and emotional needs.  All that has been accepted by the mother.

5.

There is much detail in the document, but I will quote only the main headings, which are that L was suffering significant harm by reason of neglect of his physical and emotional needs; that his mother found it difficult to meet his basic care needs, and failed to ensure a safe environment for him or to provide adequate stimulation.  She has also accepted that her lifestyle has been chaotic and unstable, which affected the care given to L and would have affected the care likely to be given to him had the local authority not intervened.

6.

Mother also conceded that she has a history of drug and alcohol misuse, that she has a history of depression, and that she had convictions for a number of offences, including violent offences.  Finally, she conceded that she has not fully engaged with social services and other professionals over the years.  I think it unnecessary to go into more detail than that.  It gives a clear indication of the concessions that were made.

7.

Those concessions open the door to consideration of the right outcome for L, which of course depends on the paramount consideration of his welfare both now and in the long term.  Assessments were ordered by the court, and the court is now furnished with a lengthy chronology, with core assessments both of mother and of L by social workers, a report by a clinical psychologist on mother’s cognitive capacity, and a lengthy report by another clinical psychologist, jointly instructed by all parties, who has assessed the mother’s parenting capacity and provided a psychological assessment of her as a person.  Finally I have a report from a very experienced children’s guardian.

8.

All these assessments are of the same voice.  All conclude that if L were returned to his mother’s care, the overwhelming likelihood is that he would return to an upbringing of significant harm.  To give the briefest of flavours of the present situation, firstly mother is at risk of eviction from her flat due to arrears of rent.  Secondly, her current boyfriend is a heroin addict, nearly twice her age, who has recently been released from prison.  Thirdly, she herself has been recently led into heroin use by, I think, this boyfriend.  Fourthly, she is still only 17 and very vulnerable.  Fifthly, she has no effective family support.  Sixthly, her commitment to contact has, unfortunately, been sporadic and unsatisfactory.

9.

In the light of all this, the mother has accepted the advice of her counsel and has bowed to what must be the inevitable.  She therefore does not consent to the proposed orders, but neither does she actively oppose them.  It is agreed that this case may be determined on the written evidence without the need for cross-examination.  In any event, when the mother did not appear at a recent directions hearing, I stood the expert witnesses down.

10.

Before making a care order, I have to be satisfied on the evidence that the care plan put forward by the applicant local authority is the appropriate one, that it meets the child’s needs, and that there is no lesser order that would do so, or will allow the child either to return to his mother’s care or to be brought up within his own wider family.  As it happens, in this case there is no potential placement within the wider family that can be considered.

11.

Before making a placement order, I have to be satisfied that the child’s welfare requires it.  In both cases the welfare checklist in section 1 of the Children Act 1989 and in section 1 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 have to be taken into account. 

12.

The psychological assessment of mother and of L makes unhappy reading.  Summarised, it says that L has an insecure and disorganised attachment to his mother, and that he has been showing very high levels of restlessness and overactive behaviour in his foster placement, with high levels of physically aggressive behaviour.  He has, in the psychologist’s opinion, limited emotional functioning and understanding; he has communication difficulties, and the psychologist’s opinion is summarised in these words.  He says: 

“Whilst L was in the care of his mother during the first 16 months of his life, he experienced very high levels of emotional neglect and adversity, and it also seems likely that he was deprived of appropriate levels of stimulation and physical care.  Findings from this assessment suggest that L’s psychological development may well have been very significantly impaired by the high levels of poor parenting that he experienced during the first 16 months of his life.”

13.

As for the mother, the psychologist says that she is very vulnerable; that she has very low levels of social support; that she has difficulty establishing and maintaining supportive intimate relationships with men – he interpolates that three at least have been in prison and that the latest is a heroin user – and that her need for attention and affection blinds her to their shortcomings.  He adds that she is likely to perpetuate this pattern in the future.  Furthermore she has a history of misusing drugs and alcohol, and continues to do so, having now started to smoke heroin as well.  This tendency, he says, is likely to continue and to increase.  She has serious personality difficulties and mental health problems which, in his opinion, need to be assessed urgently.  She fails to understand the legitimate concerns of social services in relation to her way of life and her child care.  He says she is unable to provide L with adequate levels of parental care and to keep him safe, this extending even into contact sessions.  To use his words, he says:

 “It is my opinion that the very significant difficulties that L is currently experiencing in relation to the issues of attachment and communication are linked directly to the extremely impoverished levels of parental care that he received during the first 16 months of his life whilst he was in the care of his mother.  It seems very likely that the very serious psychosocial problems that the mother is currently experiencing have their origins in her own very unhappy and insecure childhood experiences.”

Looking at the matter overall, he says this: 

“Given the deep-seated nature of the mother’s personality problems, she is likely to require an extensive and integrated package of care and support from the local services in order to address her many difficulties.  In relation to the treatment of her personality problems, she will require long-term input from a specialist multidisciplinary mental health team.  In particular, she will require a course of long-term psychological therapy for the duration of at least one year and possibly several years in order to try to address her deep-seated psychological problems.  She is also likely to require specific input in relation to addressing her alcohol and drug problems and her propensity for self-harm.”

A little further on he adds:

“It is my opinion that without a successful multi-agency intervention, the mother’s psychological prognosis is very poor, and it seems that without successful treatment, there is a very high risk of going on to experience high levels of psycho-social disturbance throughout the remainder of her adult years.  In relation to the timescale for achieving positive change, it is my opinion that the mother is unlikely to achieve positive change without experiencing at least 12 to 18 months of intense psychological support and intervention from local services.”

Then he ends by saying this:

“It is my opinion that this timescale is not compatible with the urgent need that L currently has to be placed in a permanent high quality family placement.  I would strongly recommend that L is not returned to the care of his mother and that he is placed for adoption in a permanent high quality family placement as soon as possible.”

14.

All these points have been taken up by the guardian in her report.  She has discussed these overwhelming problems with the mother, who has acknowledged that L would be “at serious and significant risk of harm if he were returned to her care at this time”.  The guardian has explained to the mother why she, the guardian, cannot support L’s return to his mother.  This has, I believe, helped the mother to make the decision that she has not to actively contest these applications.  As the guardian points out, L is a demanding child who needs constant support, encouragement, guidance and boundaries.  These he is getting in foster care, and there is significant progress with his present foster carers, although in my judgment it is noteworthy that the original foster carers found that they could not manage his behaviour successfully.

15.

The Adoption Panel has now recommended that L ought to be placed for adoption. This has been ratified by the agency’s decision maker, and I have had evidence in statement form of the available placements for a child with L’s characteristics.  It is not suggested that it will be easy to find a suitable match, but his present progress in foster care, it appears to me, makes it more hopeful that his attachments can be transferred successfully in time

16.

Having exhaustively reviewed the evidence before her and having gone carefully through the checklist, the guardian reached a conclusion with which I have to agree.  She says this:

“Sadly, my assessment of the mother’s parenting skills is such that even if the issue of her drug misuse had not come to light, my conclusion would still have remained the same.  It is my conclusion that the mother does not have the ability to meet L’s complex needs and keep him safe from experiencing further significant harm throughout his childhood.  Therefore, I am able to support the local authority in their applications for a care order and a placement order.”

17.

In my judgment, the brief review of evidence which I have conducted demonstrates clearly that L’s welfare dictates that the orders sought by the local authority must be made.  I pay tribute to the difficulty which the mother must have faced in deciding, bravely in L’s best interests, not to contest these orders.  I can only lay down the hope that if she has children in the future, she will choose her time to have them; that she will find a supportive partner, and she will seek help early.  However, in the present case it is clear beyond doubt that the orders I am making are the ones that are appropriate for L.

18.

Consequently, I dispense with the mother’s consent to the application for a placement order on the ground that L’s welfare requires it.  I endorse the care plan, including the proposals for a gradual reduction of contact between mother and child up until introductions take place with prospective adopters.  I make therefore the care order and the placement order in favour of this local authority.