A v London Borough of Islington [2015] EWFC B80 (19 May 2015)

JUDGE CORBETT:

1 This is my judgment at the conclusion of these proceedings. I am concerned with the welfare of B, a little girl born on 7^th November 2012. She has been subject to a full care order since 5^th November 2013. Before me are two applications, firstly one made by B’s mother, A, on 11^th December last year for discharge of the care order; secondly, the local authority have issued their own application for a placement order. Representations are as follows. The London Borough of Islington is represented by their solicitor, Miss Hopper; the mother is represented by counsel Miss Mitchell; B herself is represented through her guardian, Miss Smith, and solicitor, Miss Fitzpatrick.

2 The matter was listed for a final hearing of the two applications with a time estimate of two days, yesterday and today. Yesterday I heard oral evidence from the social worker Miss McCarthy, the guardian, Miss Smith, and the mother. The advocates made their submissions and I considered my judgment overnight.

3 B’s father is said to be a man called C; he has not been located despite efforts and he has not played a part in these proceedings. Ethnically I am told he is a white man; the mother is mixed race, white/black Caribbean.

4 B is now two and a half years old. The local authority have been involved with her since her birth. There were previous care proceedings heard by me at the Kingston County Court which concluded by way of a care order in November 2013, the agreed plan then being that B remain in the care of her mother. Those proceedings were virtually a year old when they were concluded. The particular concerns of the local authority were that the mother had a propensity to form relationships with violent partners and she was unable to protect herself and B, bearing in mind the mother’s learning, emotional and social needs. I should also mention that B has a half-sibling born to the mother on 12^th June 2010. He was adopted in December 2011; his mother has no contact with him. He was placed with an extended family member.

5 Within the care proceedings in relation to B the local authority proposed that she and her mother be placed in a residential placement and the local authority also supported them in semi-supported accommodation in the community. There was a very high level of support and agreement within those proceedings and I recall that they ended on a positive note. It was agreed, following the conclusion of those proceedings, that the mother was to inform the local authority of the identity of any new partners. That was of particular importance given the mother’s history and in the light of the assessment of Dr. Dowd, clinical psychologist, who had prepared an assessment of the mother within the first proceedings and indeed prepared an addendum within this set of proceedings. His professional opinion was that the mother was an extremely impulsive individual within the low borderline range of adult cognitive capacity and at significant risk of suffering from depressive illness. He also advised that it was important that she maintain a therapeutic relationship with her GP and be provided with support.

6 When the care proceedings ended in November of 2013 the mother and B remained in supported accommodation and then moved to semi-supported accommodation a few months thereafter. A high level of support was put in place following the conclusion of the previous care proceedings. That included a regular family support worker attending at the home between two and three times a week; other programmes for the mother, including an organisation called Mellow Futures; nursery provision for B; a child minder to allow the mother to go to college on one occasion a week; the mother also attended a group called Aspire, a mother and baby support group.

7 In June of last year B suffered a burn to her left foot from an iron following her mother having left the iron on the floor and becoming distracted. B was not taken to the hospital or the GP by her mother but was taken in fact the next day to the pharmacist. It was the view of the family support worker that mother minimised the burn incident and was not regretful about it. There was a child protection medical in relation to that burn incident and B’s mother acknowledged that she had hit B on the head but had stopped doing this as she was concerned that that would make B’s seizures worse.

8 The local authority have had ongoing and longstanding concerns about the mother’s relationships with men and, in particular, mother inviting men back to her flat. During an unannounced visit on 16^th May 2014 the mother told the social worker that the man present was a cousin. She then said he was a washing machine repair man. She appears to have acknowledged to Dr. Dowd at a recent meeting with him that she was in a relationship of some sort with the man.

9 Information came to light to the local authority about a man D whom the mother was seeing. On a home visit by the social worker to the mother on 5^th August 2014 the mother was warned that this man was dangerous and represented a risk to herself and to B. Mother’s response was that it was for her to make up her own mind about this man. He was seen by the police later that evening on a wall outside the property. A strategy discussion meeting took place on the next day. The decision was taken then to remove B from her mother’s care based on what the local authority regarded as the mother’s disregard of the local authority’s advice, her dishonesty and the resulting heightened risk relating to recent information about her relationship with this man. Information held on this man was that he was at high risk of domestic violence, there was a query in relation to his mental health and his misuse of drugs and abuse of animals; there were to the local authority mounting concerns about the mother’s parenting capacity, dishonesty and poor engagement with social care by this point in the summer of last year.

10 B was placed into foster care on 6^th August. On 12^th August a legal planning meeting was held with the mother, her solicitor, the social worker and legal team at the London Borough of Islington. The mother was given the opportunity to be more open and discuss all the males she had been in contact with and who had visited her flat. She said, “The only men who have been in the flat are the two you know about”. The social worker described this as “curious language” and the local authority had concerns that the mother had formed quick relationships and liaisons with men. A written agreement was drawn up on 14^th August after the mother had been able to meet and take advice from her legal representative. Part of this agreement said that she was not to have any contact with D either directly in person or indirectly, including by telephone and/or email. On the basis of signing that written agreement B was returned to her mother’s care on 15^th August. The local authority had spoken with D on 8^th October. He confirmed that he was in communication with the mother and he was, to use the word in the statement, “cagey” about the nature of their relationship.

11 At the end of 2013 and into the beginning of 2014 the mother engaged well with the family support team and the support that was provided to her but it is the local authority’s case that she has not been able to maintain this. Mother had said she did not wish to engage in any further parenting courses and that she had not found Mellow Futures helpful. A family support worker reported to the social worker in September of last year – this is after B had gone back to her mother – “Each time I visit I feel the whole situation seems false. There is no real warmth and affection between the mother and B. I am concerned that B is not offered a balanced diet at home. As the mother does not eat any vegetables she does not cook them for B, nor does B see her mother eating them to encourage her. B and her mother eat very little food and what they do eat has no variety or vegetables and I am not sure that B has the opportunity to eat meat at home as her mother does not eat it. The mother often speaks to B in a way that is far too old for her to understand.” There are examples within the different family support workers’ notes of appropriate food being eaten at least by B but the ongoing concerns of neglect appeared to mount during the summer of last year. The mother’s ability to engage with professionals appeared to diminish during the same time.

12 For the last few months the mother has been engaging with Solace Women’s Aid which was organised for her and her attendance with that course has been good. The allocated social worker has discussed with Solace the mother’s progress with the course. The coordinator informed the social worker that whilst the mother has attended each session she found the mother to be quite defensive when challenged or questioned, that the mother does not share information about her own situation or experiences and has said that although she is happy to attend the course she does not understand why she needs to.

13 It is the local authority’s case that their concerns are not only in respect of the mother’s cooperation and the men that the mother was associating with, but also in terms of the mother placing her own needs before B’s, concerns in relation to food and difficulties of the mother in meeting B’s emotional needs and maintaining a consistent routine for her.

14 B was removed into foster care in October. She has continued to have twice weekly contact with her mother and has been consistent in attending. However, it is the local authority’s case that she will often cut contact short and that B is ready to go before the end of contact. During contact there are occasions when B is spoken to by her mother, seemingly as a child much older than she is, and her mother showing frustration with B. Contact notes also show that the mother can be dismissive in contact of B, threatening to leave contact if B does not do as she is told - I remind myself that B is only two – and she fluctuates between being very affectionate to ignoring B.

15 B settled well in foster care. There has been a referral to CAMHS who, unusually in my experience during proceedings, have accepted B’s referral. The referral is due to what the social worker has described in evidence as the “disorganised attachment between B and her mother”. It is the local authority’s case that despite the large amount of support being provided for the mother she has been unable to benefit from this to such an extent that B would be provided by mother with good enough parenting.

16 The mother requested an addendum assessment by Dr. Dowd within these proceedings. That application was opposed by the local authority and the guardian but I granted it. It resulted in the final hearing being adjourned. I now have that assessment available to me. Dr. Dowd was not required for cross-examination. It is Dr. Dowd’s professional opinion that the mother “demonstrates basic levels of insight in relation to her past inappropriate decision to avoid the advice and guidance of professionals, in her decision to covertly continue her relationship with D and she was unable to suggest characteristics that he may present that indicate the potential for risk.” I accept his professional opinion that the mother should engage in psychotherapy for at least 12 to 18 months, possibly longer, due to her cognitive difficulties.

17 The local authority undertook a viability assessment of a member of the extended family, a distant cousin of the mother. That did not recommend proceeding to a special guardianship assessment. The cousin, although he did attend the local authority’s offices on a number of occasions, failed to provide the necessary documentation for a special guardianship assessment and indeed other information that was required. That assessment was negative; it has been sent to him at the address he provided, by special delivery but I am told that the information the local authority have is that he has not collected that assessment from the post office. No other member of the family was put forward for the local authority to assess.

18 In respect of the mother’s application to discharge the care order the law is quite plain. The burden is on her to prove that B’s welfare interests require that I should discharge the care order, the mother’s case being that the care order should be discharged and B returned to her under a transition plan which I should direct the local authority put in place. B’s welfare is my paramount consideration. It is her welfare at the date of the hearing which is relevant. I need to take a holistic approach to the options available to the court. The realistic options within these proceedings are that B remains subject to a care order or she returns to her mother or I make a placement order. The care order which was made in November 2013 did not say on the face of it that the local authority should provide the mother with seven or indeed 14 days’ notice of removal, save in emergency situations, which is something which is now usually included on the face of the orders since the case of Re D E 2014 EWFC 6, a decision of Baker J. I mention that because that is now regarded as good practice but no submissions have been made on this point and I say no more about it.

19 According to Dr. Dowd, the mother has personality traits which are unlikely to change without long term therapeutic intervention. Without such therapy she is very, very likely to make poor choices, putting B at risk from her choice of friendships and future partners. The risk is of physical or sexual harm or exposure to domestic violence. I accept Miss McCarthy’s analysis as a social worker that the mother’s intellectual capacity means that she is unable to hold B, any partner and herself in mind at the same time in order to make safe choices for B. Until about the end of March of last year the local authority were sufficiently positive about the mother that they planned to apply for a discharge of the care order in November 2014 showing – illustrating and indicating in my judgment – a real openness on behalf of the local authority who have been involved with this child since her birth. It is right to say that at a paediatric assessment in July 2014 there were no paediatric concerns. However, the fact is that the mother was not able to maintain her progress with the family support team. She had not requested a referral for therapy from her GP and indeed still has not or plans to do so, despite the fact that Dr. Dowd said that that was necessary and important. She said she did not wish to attend any further parenting courses and that she did not find Mellow Futures parenting course helpful. The social worker spent some time in her evidence giving evidence and being asked about her opinion that B has poor nutrition. It was put to her that B, certainly in July of last year, was on the 75^th centile for weight. I do not accept that that is an indicator of good nutrition. Reading the contact notes there appears to be an ongoing issue still in contact about the mother giving inappropriate food to B. I pause to say that if this case were just about B being given inappropriate food it would be hard to argue that a placement order was the only option. Clearly the question of nutrition has been a concern to the local authority but it is one of many.

20 B had been taking sodium valproate on a regular basis for epilepsy and has now been weaned off that. It was thought that she had childhood febrile convulsions. She has delayed speech and the speech and language therapist has told the social worker that the likely cause of that is neglect. There is no written evidence to that effect but I accept from Miss McCarthy that she was being honest with the court when she told the court in evidence that that was the information she had had directly from the speech and language therapist. There has been some improvement in language since B has been in foster care, although there is some way to go. B has had I think some eight placements in her two and a half years; it is clear that she needs very good parenting. The guardian said in her evidence, which I accept, that “B is very challenging to care for. She is attention seeking and she needs a lot of input and stimulation.” The social worker told me, and I accept, that when B went into foster care in October she was highly anxious at first, very emotional and would cry for long periods. She would even call the social worker “Mum”. She was very distressed when she was left at nursery and the social worker and the foster carer thought that B feared not being collected at the end of the nursery session. She now sleeps through the night and is eating well and eating regularly and is generally a happier child.

21 The social worker’s professional opinion is that B was showing signs of a disorganised detachment to her mother. I accept that the social worker is not a psychiatrist but she has a professional opinion to give as a social worker and I accept her opinion. She went on to say that if B had a secure attachment to her mother one would see some level of emotional attachment at the beginning or end of contact which is not seen. The social worker volunteered in her evidence that contact now is more positive than it had been in the period from approximately October of last year to February of this year when the mother’s ability to engage with B was really quite limited. She also emphasised in her oral evidence that in the first two or three months of being in the mother’s sole care early last year things were going well which is why the local authority were considering applying to discharge the care order but then there was a significant decline.

22 A crucial question for the court is whether support can be put into place so that B would not be exposed to harm if she were to remain in her mother’s care if the care order were discharged. I can be satisfied that since the making of the care order in November 2013 the local authority has tried to keep B safe in sharing parental responsibility with the mother. Until about two weeks ago the mother had refused any therapeutic support. She now said in her evidence that she plans to go to see her GP to ask her GP for a referral. As I have already said, Dr. Dowd’s opinion was that psychotherapeutic support would be for a 12 to 18 month period at least.

23 I recognise that the local authority have not arranged ‘keep safe’ work as they said they would when B was taken into care last year but the mother does attend the organisation called ‘Solace’ now but it is said that she does not talk about her own situation and I get the impression of her rather superficial engagement. In the mother’s own evidence she could not say how she would make different choices now about friends or partners, just that she would, to use her words, “listen to professionals”. In preparation for her final report the guardian asked the mother what different choices or decisions would she make now but she said she had not thought about it. The fact that the mother said in evidence that she would listen to professionals in itself is good but only goes a very small amount of the way. It is not an indicator of actually being able herself to protect herself and B. Miss McCarthy’s opinion is that the mother does not think she has made any mistakes, Miss McCarthy being a social worker who has been involved with and allocated to B for several months.

24 In relation to the Solace work I should have said that the guardian said in her evidence that she was struck by the mother’s inability to transfer what she had learned at Solace into actually changing her behaviour in the future.

25 Very sadly this mother has no extended family support in evidence. Her distant cousin was unable to complete the special guardianship assessment. She has no family support at court. The guardian was very firmly of the view that no further support could be given to the mother to make B’s placement with her safe. She said that it has been tried before. The guardian was asked in cross-examination whether B ought to remain in foster care or in protected care whilst the mother’s insight improved and whilst she undertakes psychotherapy. I accept the guardian’s response that given B’s age – two and a half years old now – and the time she spent in proceedings (almost all her life) that 12 to 18 months as a minimum would be too long for B to see whether her mother could learn and gain some insight and be able to parent safely.

26 There are of course detriments to placement in long term foster care. There is no certainty or even probability that the mother’s insight would improve through psychotherapy even if psychotherapy were available, which is not known to the court today. After a minimum of 12 to 18 months B would be three and a half to four years old, in long term foster care, with the inherent uncertainties of a local authority being a corporate parent. If the care order is not discharged the local authority seek a placement order so that it can put a plan of adoption into place because, although they have a care order at present, that care plan – which I approved in November 2013 – was that the placement be with her mother. The guardian is also experienced as an agency advisor to a different local authority permanence panel. Her professional opinion, having read the family finding evidence and spoken to the allocated social worker, is that B is likely to be adopted within a reasonable timescale. I accept her opinion.

27 I can conclude that A loves B enormously. She has tried within her own limitations to provide her with safe care but she does not have the insight or capacity to be able to learn how to keep B and herself safe in B’s timescales. She has demonstrated that despite some good basic parenting there are real and serious risks of harm to B from her poor choice of partners or relationships and her inability to keep to written agreements with the local authority. The local authority could not have made it more clear to the mother that she should tell them about relationships and later that she should not have any contact at all with someone named D. She breached that agreement; she sought to deceive professionals about him, as it appears to me it is likely she did earlier in 2014 about other men. I cannot see how the local authority could rely on her cooperation. Despite her first child being removed and adopted, despite there being a full care order for B, despite B having been removed for nine or so days in August 2014 because of the relationship with D and her having legal advice at that stage and signing a written agreement, she was in contact with him again, as she says in her statement.

28 The mother has failed to persuade the court that the proportionate and necessary approach I should take to B’s welfare is to discharge her care order and I dismiss that application.

29 The other plan which is clearly an option before the court - the examination-in-chief and the cross-examination of all the witnesses has been about both applications – is the local authority’s application for a placement order. The local authority have today, by agreement, provided an addendum to the care plan which deals with the reduction of contact and how that is to take place, that the social worker would meet with the mother to discuss her views and wishes in respect of post-adoption contact and consider her capacity to promote an adoptive placement. The social worker will arrange a meeting between A and the prospective adopters, give consideration to direct post-adoption contact and seek adopters who are willing to consider direct contact. This social worker gave very clear evidence that she would like the mother and B to have some sort of relationship post-adoption and that the local authority would seek prospective adopters who would consider direct contact, that being relatively infrequent direct contact, but nonetheless direct and not just indirect. The guardian told me that this particular social worker has been involved in such successful direct contact post-adoption placements before. Although, as the guardian said, it is rare to have direct contact post-adoption, certainly the guardian supported the consideration of direct contact by prospective adopters. The mother would need to be able to support the placement and to make it fine for B to move on. The social worker volunteered in her evidence that she knows that the mother wants the best for B.

30 Having heard the mother in the witness box and read about her, I hope that she can support an adoptive placement and I urge her to meet prospective adopters. I very much hope that she could support an adoptive placement sufficiently to give prospective adopters confidence that they could cooperate with her. Any prospective adopters meeting the mother would see a young woman with no family support, who loves B a great deal, who has tried her best but ultimately could not provide enough safe care for B now or in the foreseeable future.

31 If B were to remain subject to a care order but no placement order made, she would remain in long term foster care with all the disadvantages I referred to earlier, but with the obvious advantage that her mother would remain her mother and retain a reasonable level of contact. If a placement order is granted a child becomes a member of another family, a family who would be chosen as suitable in a rigorous process, matched for that child in the light of her physical and emotional needs. The disadvantages of a placement order are palpable: the loss of the birth mother and the loss or huge reduction of contact, except as I have already set out. In this case the social worker will seek prospective adopters who can consider direct contact.

32 I am completely satisfied that B’s welfare, not just now but throughout her life, does require a placement order to be made and for her to be adopted. Her welfare requires that I dispense with her mother’s consent. ‘Require’ means ‘something of the imperative’. It is imperative that I dispense with mother’s consent pursuant to s.52.1(b) as it is not forthcoming. I urge the mother to seek the psychotherapy which she says she plans to do. I would ask whether the local authority could consider providing at least written support for the mother to take to her GP for a psychotherapeutic referral. She will need to take with her to the GP the reports from Dr. Dowd. Although psychotherapy would be a cost to the public purse, I am fairly confident that with a woman as young as she is that that will be money well spent at this stage by the National Health Service if it can be provided.

33 In conclusion I dismiss the mother’s application. I grant a placement order. I accept the addendum to the care plan which has been provided. There needs to be a transcript of this judgment on the child’s file obtained by the local authority.

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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales Family Court Decisions (other Judges) >> A v London Borough of Islington [2015] EWFC B80 (19 May 2015) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/OJ/2015/B80.html Cite as: [2015] EWFC B80

England and Wales Family Court Decisions (other Judges)