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England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions >> C (Children), Re [2010] EWCA Civ 1424 (21 October 2010) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2010/1424.html Cite as: [2010] EWCA Civ 1424 |
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ON APPEAL FROM LEICESTER COUNTY COURT
HER HONOUR JUDGE HAMPTON & HIS HONOUR JUDGE LEA
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL |
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B e f o r e :
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In the matter of C (Children) |
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WordWave International Limited
A Merrill Communications Company
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The Respondent did not appear and was not represented.
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Lady Justice Black:
"The support in relation to such contact shall extend to either Mr W or Ms D meeting the 1st Respondent and the children at St Pancras Station at the commencement of contact in London and delivering the 1st Respondent [the mother] and the children to St Pancras Station on the final day of contact. On each occasion either Mr W or Ms D shall telephone the Applicant father to confirm that the 1st Respondent and children have arrived as scheduled or departed as scheduled, whichever the case may be."
The outcome that the father had wished from that hearing was rather greater supervision of the contact; indeed at that point I think he was seeking to have it totally supervised.
"I have seen what the guardian says about this and I have been referred to what Mr Ives [the clinical psychologist] has said. It seems to me that it is also unnecessary for that support to be present for the purposes of a train journey, and that Mr W and Miss D can meet the children at the railway station and be involved thereafter if the contact takes place but there is no need for them to effectively travel as part of the train journey."
"Having heard submissions and having read the papers, I came to the conclusion that supervision was unnecessary -- having regard amongst other things to the age of these children -- and that contact, other than telephone contact, should be supported."
So we glean from that the age of the children, not surprisingly, had an impact on the judge's decision.
"Just to clarify for myself and the Guardian, today you appear to be saying that you have never said that contact needs to be supervised, but more that you need to approach it with caution."
Dr Ives confirms that that summarises his view. Then the guardian's representative goes on to deal with the type of contact, and says:
"Looking at the type of contact that was in place before you were asked to report, would you say that that would still continue to be appropriate, or not? Where there is some element of support over longer periods, but otherwise unsupervised contact over a short weekend period."
"I think it depends how she is doing, and I think it depends how much she is drinking, how often she is drinking and, as this case has progressed my concerns about her mental stability have got worse rather than better. An example is the suicide attempt in January this year, which is quite recent."
"Q. If I said to you that at weekends the father brings the children to Leicester. They travel on the train on their own with their mother. They are met at the other end by Mr W. He then supervises most of the contact over the weekend. Some of it is supervised by another family friend. And there are periods of up to two hours -- contact where the mother may go off with the children on their own, and then the reverse happens on the return journey, so that the children are effectively alone with their mum only for the two journeys and periods --
A. And some time in the middle, yes."
"I think that feels quite reasonably safe because she is, if you like, inspected at the beginning and the end. There is some support during. If there were problems, they would rapidly come to everybody's attention. That feels to me like a reasonably safe arrangement."
Order: Applications refused