Gloucestershire County Council v Mother & Ors [2022] EWFC 215 (B) (21 November 2022)

Summary

Baby H is now just a year old. He was removed from his parents at birth and so has never lived with them. It is agreed between the representatives that the threshold in section 31 of the Children Act 1989 is passed. His parents were assessed by a psychologist and an independent social worker in March and April this year. Each of those assessments conclude that neither parent is in a position now to meet Baby H's needs and both advise that Baby H cannot wait for decisions to be made about where he is to be brought up. The parents ask for a chance to be further assessed and to be placed, individually or together, with their son whilst they address their problems. I have grave concerns about the fairness of the processes over the year since Baby H was born but I have come to the conclusion that his interests require that he is placed with his long-term carers now and that his birth parents are not able to be those carers because of the difficulties in their relationship and their individual behavioural problems. Very sadly, I have to refuse the parents application for an adjournment and further assessment. The evidence therefore drives me to the conclusion that the parents cannot meet their child's needs now and will not be able to do so in his time scales, and so he must be cared for outside his family because no other carers have been found who would be appropriate. The plan which best meets his needs now is adoption

1. This case concerns a little boy called H, who was born on [redacted] and is now just a year old. In this judgment, his mother is described as the Mother, his father as the Father. I have seen H's photograph and he is a beautiful boy with his father's blonde hair and his mother's eyes.

2. I have already given a judgment recording some of the facts in this case. It is dated 23.2.22 and should be read in conjunction with this judgment.

3. Significant decisions were made about H's future by social workers and police officers, before he was born and shortly afterwards, which will have shaped the rest of his life, on the basis of inadequate information and poor judgement. The Court has been unable to reverse those effects. The case demonstrates much that is wrong with the processes of care proceedings but more about what is wrong with decisions taken without court oversight.

4. Judgments are given in cases like this to explain to the parties how the court has reached its decision: one of the parties is the child, H, who is entitled to have the best possible explanation when he is an adult as to why, if it happens, he is not brought up by his birth parents, or why, if he remains with his parents, that was considered to be in his interests: an important function of a judgment at the end of a trial is to have a record of the justification for the decisions made that is openly and transparently available, within the limits of confidentiality: a judgment can also highlight good practice and identify less than optimal practice that may need to change.

5. This case is about H's future: the local authority seeks care and placement orders, saying that his parents are not able to meet his needs and will not be able to do so within a timescale that would benefit him. The Guardian supports this position. The parents seek to care for their child and are willing to do whatever is required to make that possible, but they argue for the opportunity of a residential assessment where they could care for him whilst being assessed. This is not a claim against the local authority or the police force as may happen, for example in A-W & C (Children) [2013] EWHC B41 (Fam) (07 October 2103) (bailii.org) but it is right that I consider the facts relating to H's removal from his parents so that there is a proper understanding of his life story and because those are the circumstances that lead to the request for a residential assessment now. They will feel, and I find, that actions taken at the outset will have shaped the outcome of the proceedings in a way that reduced the likelihood of his being brought up in his birth family.

6. The evidence in support of the local authority case can be summarised shortly and, if it is accepted, the counter argument is that the process has been flawed and there should be delay for better assessment. It is therefore necessary to look at that process.

7. The failures of what should be caring systems which have come about in this case are as follows: both parents were disadvantaged in their upbringing, mother came into the care of her local authority, and father came to the attention of his local authority because of some of his offending behaviour, but neither of those local authorities equipped them to be able to manage their adult lives without encountering intervention by other local authorities: the current local authority failed to engage the parents or gain their confidence before H was born: the local authority for the area in which H was actually born has never been involved, because this local authority had assumed a role pre-birth when Mother was living in its area: H was born on a Saturday when the social work team which had assumed responsibility for him would not be at work and so it was the out of hours duty team who communicated with the local police force: although there had been many months in which to obtain information and understand it, the local authority gave an inaccurate picture to that police force: the police force relied on that information without checking records which would have been available to them and intervened to the extraordinary extent of being present outside the delivery room at the hospital in which H was born and preventing him from even having skin to skin contact with his mother following birth: by contrast, the hospital staff were supportive of the parents, kind and generous to them in this crisis, and put up with the presence of the police on the hospital premises for three days whilst H remained there, despite the significant practical and emotional impact of the police presence in the maternity wing: the police had taken a police protection order despite the absence of any evidence available to this Court now, after a year of preparation, of immediate risk to the child, and in disregard of, the safeguarding birth plan and discharge template which provided for an interim care order to be sought and rejected both PPO and EPO, and so were able to detain him in the hospital and separate him from both his parents: the local authority took it upon itself to transfer the child from the hospital in which he had been born to a hospital in the county town for their local authority without sharing parental responsibility and without consulting the parents: thereafter, although the parents acknowledged that a court might make an interim care order and were willing to go with H into an assessment centre, it became obvious that the information supplied by the local authority to potential assessment centres would exclude them from those centres because the local authority persisted in regarding the Father as a significant criminal threat: the court made findings that were intended to correct this information but no placement arose: H has been placed with foster carers, but he has been prevented from having the chance of being brought up by his parents because of these failings.

8. It is clear to the court that decisions made pre-birth on the basis of a prejudicial reading of the criminal records and the parents' unwillingness to engage with the local authority have deprived him of the chance of enjoying his right to family life with his birth family. It was clear from the adoption application originally filed that the local authority held to its initial views without any regard for the decision that the court made in February or the direct evidence from the hospital: it contained mistakes that have now been corrected, but which suggested a carelessness that is unacceptable given the significance of an application for an adoption order. The local authority chose not to modify its view of the case on receipt of the February judgment or the evidence from the hospital, and that cannot be excused by reference to the pressure of work.

9. At several points in the evidence put before the court it was clear that there were no written records of telephone conversations in which important information would have been shared, including the social worker's call to the police the night before H was born and the call between the police and the emergency duty team social worker on the morning of his birth. Some documents that are thought to exist have not been produced or have been reported as having no relevant content: these include the email sent by the social worker to EDT the night before H was born and notebooks of the police officers who attended at the hospital on the day that he was born.

10. The local authority's view of the parents as dangerous and its characterisation of the case as high risk are evident from the decisions made by the police and the emergency duty team, the police actions, and the social worker's response to being called to give evidence: the absence of a record of the decision-making process that would have been shown by these documents only serves to deepen the sense of prejudice and injustice that the parents feel.

H's birth

11. Inspector S of Avon and Somerset Constabulary attended court to speak to his own statement and assist with the information which had been disclosed by the police. In the few days before H was born, Mother had not wanted to engage with the social worker and had wanted to spend time on her own enjoying her pregnancy, knowing that her baby was going to be removed from her. She communicated with her midwife at this stage by text. The social worker, SW1, became alarmed and arranged for Mother's details to be advertised on the police website as a missing person. Neither she nor counsel for the local authority could bring themselves to tell me explicitly what she was worried about or how advertising her in this way would benefit her or H, but I deduce that it was based on the fact that Mother was known to have self-harmed in some way in the past. This event had been in January 2018, nearly 4 years previously, although the original adoption application referred to it as having been in 2020. H was due on [redacted] and before she went off duty on the Friday before H was born on a Saturday SW1 made a phone call to Gloucestershire police at 17:02 hours. We do not know what she said because she kept no note and there has been no disclosure obtained from Gloucestershire police. Inspector S came on duty at 7 AM the next morning in Bristol and was approached by the emergency duty team from Gloucester: he told me he had a conversation with them which he mentally noted for later that day but he had no memory of the contents of that conversation. The recording of the EDT social worker, Ms S, reads, "given the concerns police had in respect of father being violent and aggressive we had a discussion around the appropriateness of mum and baby having skin on skin contact, it was said that should mum have hold of the baby and refused to hand him back this could then increase any further risks to the baby."

12. The Inspector was clear in his evidence that a decision was reached between himself and Ms S the baby should be removed without mother being allowed to hold him or have skin to skin contact.

13. The local authority's safeguarding birth plan and discharge template, prepared by SW1 was produced to the court, having been omitted from the bundle. It makes no mention of skin to skin contact and it specifically provides that the plan was for "Baby to be separated from mother following birth" and that lawful authority for the plan would be obtained via "Care proceedings will be issued upon birth of baby X." The boxes for PPO and EPO both have the entry "No."

14. Inspector S made the decision to make a police protection order.

15. It is helpful to set out section 46(1) of the Children Act 1989.

s46 (1) where a constable has reasonable cause to believe that a child would otherwise be likely to suffer significant harm, he may –

a) remove the child to suitable accommodation and keep him there; or

b) take such steps as are reasonable to ensure that the child's removal from any hospital, or other place in which he is then being accommodated is prevented.

16. The significant harm that was anticipated was said to be that the parents might have removed the child from the hospital before he had had any necessary treatment (he needed none) and that therefore he might be harmed if a parent was holding him and refused to give him up.

17. The inspector told me that he had not consulted the father's PNC, although he would have been able to do so but he had seen his own police force's log, which contains material passed on from Gloucestershire police and had the conversation with the social worker. Any information which he had about father's violence or aggression must have been relayed from social services. Ms S would have seen SW1's email. As I have said, there were phone calls which have not been recorded.

18. Courts talk in terms of babies being separated from their mothers at birth in a great many cases: where a baby is born in hospital, he is still in his mother's care in the delivery room and is usually allowed to have contact with his parents and receive care from his mother, sometimes for several days, until the court makes an order.

19. In all the many years' experience of the senior social worker, the inspector, the court, and the Guardian, only the Guardian had ever come across a case in which a child was not permitted skin to skin contact at birth, and she told me that that was a single case in which the mother had attempted to harm the baby in the womb. My view is that the only circumstances in which this should happen would have to involve a realistic threat that the mother would attempt to harm her own child at birth.

20. The expert evidence in this case included the psychologist's advice to the court that even babies who are very unwell and have to be cared for in incubators are given skin to skin contact with their parents, and the Guardian told me that skin to skin contact promotes the development of a healthy immune system.

21. The consultant obstetrician who was present at H's birth objected to this plan but was overruled by the police. I deduce that the information provided by the police to the consultant must have been extreme. It is becoming less unusual for the public to be aware that police officers do not always understand the limits of their powers.

What was the basis for the decision to separate H from his parents without skin-to-skin contact?

22. Inspector S told me that he accepted the information that he was given which included the potential for the baby to be born with alcohol and cocaine in his system. The significant information appears to have been that it was said that the father had threatened to remove the baby from the hospital to avoid his being taken into care, and that would have also deprived the baby of any necessary treatment. No recording of the father making such a statement has been shown to me from any of the social work records or in the police information. It was suggested that the father may have said something to the police officers at the hospital: this would not have been available to Inspector S when he had his conversation with EDT, because it was before the police officers were deployed: no notebook with this information has been produced, and the evidence is that the parents did not know the police were present at the hospital until H was born and was being removed from them. Police at the hospital were apparently told that the father would not leave the mother alone, and it seems unlikely that the police had any conversation with him before H was born since he was with the mother in the delivery room.

23. There were two points in the evidence (independent social worker and the social worker) at which the observation was made to me that "just because there is no evidence it does not mean that something did not happen." Local authorities often hold this view and use it to justify risk assessments: it is unacceptable– decisions and assessments of risk must be based on evidence.

24. Even if such a statement had been made, this was a terrible overreaction. Mother was unlikely to flee with the baby, having just given birth and in particular having had an epidural so being unable to use her legs, and father was unlikely to go with the baby leaving the mother behind. Even if she had held onto H when asked to hand him over there has been no previous indication she would harm him nor does anybody consider that she would deliberately harm him.

25. If such a statement had been made, there were other steps open to the police to safeguard H, simply involving removing the father from the hospital premises. Inspector S told me (apparently unconscious of the irony involved) that the hospital refused to take any action to allow them to remove the father because he was being a supportive and appropriate birthing partner and the mother needed him there, which tends to suggest that there was no objective basis for thinking that the father would cause problems. If he had been threatening to remove H or to take any other risky action, he could have been arrested, at the very least to prevent a breach of the peace. Inspector S helpfully told me that the police could have made a dispersal order, which would have required father to leave and would have allowed them to arrest him if he had failed to do so.

26. H was deprived of the comfort, reassurance, boosted immunity, and recognition of his parents that would have come with simply being held by them.

27. I hardly need to say that his parents lost what should have been very precious moments with him. During the hearing, father's counsel advised the court that there was a video recording made on father's telephone of the conversation between the parents and the police officer after H had been taken from the room to the nursery. We played this in court so that it forms part of the record. It is harrowing to listen to. Mother's distress is evident and quite loud: she is beside herself and her crying is ghastly. Father is controlled, calm and sensible, he speaks at a normal pace and volume, and is only trying to secure the opportunity for Mother to hold her child for just five minutes. His speech is occasionally interspersed with the word fuck or fucking. He says, at worst, "SW2's fucked, don't worry, I'll sort it." Having heard the recording, I do not consider that this was a serious threat against the social worker but an expression of anger and his desire to protect his baby and partner. He also asks rhetorically why he should not post the social worker's email and phone number on Facebook, since she was the instigator of the advert on the police website that Mother had gone missing that embarrassed her and he would have considered that the social worker was the source of the decision to prevent skin to skin contact. We can hear the voice of the Divisional Head of Nursing, whose statement is in the bundle, explaining that she is not the person making the decisions.

28. The social worker, SW1, gave evidence. She had been unwilling to come to court and she declared that she was terrified of encountering the parents and would only give her evidence from the vulnerable witness suite. It appears that she had been told that serious threats have been made against her. I set out her evidence in more detail later on in this judgment. What is relevant at this stage is that she agreed that if she had heard Father make a threat to remove H from the hospital she would have recorded it and there is no such record. I repeat that there is no evidence of serious threats against her and I asked that the social worker present in court show her the Divisional Head of Nursing's statement and the email from the hospital solicitor in the hope that she could be reassured.

29. H was cared for by hospital staff: I have no doubt that he had the best care that a hospital can provide, but he was a healthy baby who would have spent a great deal of time in a cot on his own at a time when other children would be in their parents' arms. He was transferred from the Bristol hospital to the hospital in Gloucester at social services' direction for no good reason other than that that was going to be more convenient to the foster parents when identified. He was not placed with foster parents until 18^th November, so spent five days pretty much on his own.

30. The local authority had no parental responsibility when they moved him.

31. At the first hearing before me I was told that Mother had still not been allowed to hold her baby: only when I said that I would not proceed with the hearing until that had happened was I told that the baby was no longer in the hospital where Mother remained and the parents had no idea where their son was.

32. I requested information from hospital which led in due course to the statement from the Divisional Head of Nursing, which shows that the father was well behaved, entirely appropriate in his interaction, and very grateful for the care his partner had received whilst on the ward. She was present when the police attended and exercised their powers: she says that Father expressed his emotions in a measured way and understood that the police officers were doing their job and stated this. She saw several times when she might have expected him to become upset that might have manifested in aggression, but this did not happen. The measure of the parents' behaviour is that they were permitted to remain together in the hospital from Saturday for three days when the hospital would be busy and neither of them needed to be there for their health.

33. I also sought a statement from the consultant and received a very full email from the hospital solicitor containing the information that the consultant could provide and seeking not to become a witness in the case unless it was absolutely necessary.

34. This email appears in section K of the bundle and I very much doubt that it has been part of the information supplied to any potential assessment agency although it, together with Divisional Head of Nursing statement, provide the most objective information about the parents. Father pointed out to me that he and mother had effectively been assessed in the hospital and it is fair to say that their behaviour at a time of great stress was observed and recorded by medical staff who have plenty of experience of human behaviour as very dignified and positive.

35. The behaviour of the parents in the court and in the hospital, two environments in which it might be thought they were being treated with consideration and respect, has been appropriate and respectful.

36. The police force imposed itself on a busy hospital without justification, apparently on the basis of what they were told by a social worker. If there was evidence that the father was going to abduct H from the hospital once the police protection order had been made, he could have been arrested and it would not have been necessary to have police officers stalking the wards of the hospital, which must have been intimidating for the other users and staff of the hospital. It remains beyond the imagination of the court to understand how the perceived risk required H to be physically taken from his mother at the moment of birth without her having the opportunity to hold or even look at him properly. Mother's description of that experience is categorised as traumatic by the psychologist assessing her (para 6.40) and the impact on the child being removed from his mother by strangers at birth will have been damaging.

37. It is right that both parents have behaved towards each other both before and since H's birth in ways which show that H would have been at risk in their care if that behaviour had continued whilst they were caring for him. The only assessment of their behaviour together with H has been in the delivery room and at contact, and none of those recordings suggest that they were in any way inappropriate. On the contrary, the contact notes show that both parents contact was always positive and they both responded well to advice and direction. He might well have been safely cared for by either of them individually. If he had been allowed to go with his mother into a mother and baby foster placement or residential assessment centre it would very quickly have become clear whether she was able to meet his needs with the father separately accommodated or not. Many mothers do go into such placements whilst remaining in relationships with their partners and take the opportunity of working on the relationship. There has not been the opportunity of finding out if these parents could have cared for H if there had been proper support. There should have been access to a mother and baby placement: the court remains concerned that whilst other local authorities in the same court centre were placing mothers and babies in residential units or with foster carers in the week of H's birth nothing was offered to this family until, some weeks later, there was an offer of a placement 200 miles away.

38. The local authority evidence contains untruths that cannot be excused on the basis of mistake. In particular, I was told that H required treatment in the NICU because he was withdrawing from substances ingested by his mother: that is not true; and I was told that the father had made threats against the social worker in the delivery room and threatened to abscond with the child: that is not true either.

39. The statement prepared by the team manager to explain to the court the decision-making process and risk assessment that led to H being removed from his mother at birth includes the prejudicial statement that Father shot Mother in the stomach with an air rifle when she was five weeks pregnant: the parents give a different account of this incident amounting to foolish horseplay, but it should have been easy for a social worker to recognise that an incident that happened on 10.1.21 preceded the conception of a baby born on [redacted] more than ten months later.

40. This statement also states that, "Both parents have made threats to kill the social worker and the reports are that father has made comments to his friends on Facebook to make attempts to find both the social worker's address along with her car." None of this is true. Any such threats would have led to prosecution and any such comments on Facebook would have been exhibited to the social worker's statement.

What were the consequences of H's removal in this fashion?

41. Most obviously, H was not cared for by his parents. He has not since been returned to his parents' care. Mother has had great difficulty in adjusting to the loss of her child in this way: she has only just begun to make the changes that are required for her to be able to care for a child and she says, and I accept, that the impact of H's removal in this way on her well-being has taken a long time to overcome. The evidence on which the parents were advised to consent to the first in interim care order was inaccurate (see para 44), but had their consent been withdrawn at a later stage it was not likely that any order would be discharged unless it could have been on the basis of placement in an assessment centre.

Why has no placement in which mother and baby could be reunited been provided?

42. The local authority appears to have come to a conclusion that this was not an option before H was born. The record of that decision is in the Safeguarding Birth Plan and Discharge Template: it appears that this plan was made by the social worker on her own without the multiagency meeting that should have taken place. Her statement is dated [redacted], the Monday after H was born on Saturday [redacted], and she told me that she prepared it on that date. It would not have been unreasonable for it to have been largely prepared before he was born. She says in her second paragraph that the local authority "is not recommending a parent and baby facility," due to the level of risk posed by the parents and she goes on to describe domestic violence. She gives no consideration to the possibility which would have met her own case that H could have been placed with one of his parents in a parent and baby foster placement or assessment centre with the other parent kept at a distance: her own statement records that on 4.11.21 Father said he would step back in order to allow Mother to be assessed in a mother and baby setting if needed.

43. She lists two incidents, 4.3.21 and 14.4.21, one of which has been exaggerated and one of which is put as "Father grabbing Mother." On 23.7.21 she says Mother was distressed but was assessed as having capacity and not being suicidal at Bristol Temple Meads, and she says that police officers provided Mother with transport to Bristol City Housing offices, although she does not tell me what the housing department were able to offer her and Father says elsewhere that she came "home" to his accommodation and the police were content to leave her there. It is not clear what element of this incident is supposed to demonstrate risk to a child or that the parents' relationship was abusive. On 28.7.21 a stranger told police officers that Mother had said that her partner had been physically abusing her: she denied this. On 13.9.21 Father was very drunk and committed offences which I deal with below: the anonymous report alleges that Father hit Mother. On 3.11.21 Mother had an altercation with her mother. There is a pattern of abusive behaviour between the parents, although it is clear that they are also able to spend time together peacefully and happily. It is not so clear that this behaviour prevented the child being cared for by either parent alone or by both of them in a supportive setting and I do not consider it certain that a court would have so found. However, parents consented to the initial interim care order at a time when they would have been advised on the basis of their being search to be evidence of threats to abscond and to kill the social worker. It is a matter of law as well as obvious fact that children are adversely affected by being exposed to conflict, but it is not automatic that a child has to be removed from both his parents to protect him or reduce the harm to which he is exposed.

44. This statement contains a series of significant untruths.

1. First, she says Dr A, the consultant obstetrician, reported that Mother stopped pushing and required an assisted delivery when she was told that her baby would be removed.

2. The next is that he had to be medically resuscitated.

3. Then that he was being treated for cocaine and cannabis withdrawal, repeated at para 6.4 "currently (15.11.22) being supported with withdrawal."

4. Then that midwifery staff at Southmead Hospital had overheard conversations between Father and Mother saying they were going to kill the social worker and that Father had said he had sent messages out on Facebook to track the social worker's car in order to get her address.

5. Then that the hospital kept Mother in hospital due to concerns around her mental health.

6. Then that Mother had advised hospital staff she would not stay in hospital unless Father could stay with her.

45. SW1 must have obtained all her information by telephone, since she was preparing the statement on Monday 15^th November. I requested a statement from the consultant obstetrician which led to the email dated 30.11.21 from the hospital trust solicitor which I passed on to the local authority. The social worker has not corrected her evidence. Using the same numbering as my list above, the hospital told me that:

1. it was not accurate to say that Mother had stopped pushing at the news that her baby was going to be removed.

2. Baby was taken to the resuscitaire as a standard procedure because he was born with meconium. He never needed to be resuscitated.

3. The consultant obstetrician confirmed that at no time did she say that the baby was being treated for cocaine and cannabis withdrawal, and nobody had informed her of the same.

4. A statement was obtained from the Divisional Head of Nursing which contradicts this.

5. As a simple matter of law, the hospital would not keep Mother against her will unless she was so unwell that she was sectioned.

6. It is quite clear that the hospital was happy for Father to remain on the premises and that his behaviour was entirely appropriate: see the statement of the Divisional Head of Nursing,

46. There was a search for placement, but none was found. The parties have a sense that that search was affected by the inaccurate evidence described above and the view held by the first social worker carrying over to the placement team that father was a very dangerous man. The court considers it likely that those views did impact the search and could well have been conveyed to the various possible placements in the telephone conversations which certainly take place.

47. The social worker, SW1, gave her evidence on the first day of this hearing. There had been an application in the week before the hearing for her to be allowed to give her evidence remotely which I had refused on the basis that no witness should be afraid of assault or intimidation from a party to proceedings on the court premises and there is no evidence in the bundle to warrant such a fear, but I was told that she was so nervous as to be unable to give her best evidence and it was arranged (pursuant to PD3A.7) for her to give evidence via a Teams link from another room in the court building. Neither of the parents objected to that, and the Father was prepared to leave the courtroom himself so that SW1 could come in, but she was not prepared to come into the courtroom at all. Her evidence was given with bravado and she was defensive: she answered a great many questions by saying that she could not comment because she had had nothing to do with the case since writing her statement, although she later said she had been at the first hearing, and she said she was unaware of the evidence from the hospital about the parents' demeanor because she had been taken off the case, and yet she knew about the father's undertaking not to attempt to discover the address of any local authority employee or to go to the hospital where H had been placed. She could not tell me what the source of the information that Father had expressed an intention "to take the baby from the unit" (G3) was and supposed that it might have been said "on the day": she agreed that she would have recorded it if it had been said to her. There was little indication of thoughtfulness, or sensitivity to the family's experience in what she said. Her most fluent evidence was about the impact on herself of the police arriving at her home early on the morning of 14 November to tell her that threats had been made against her: this must have affected her preparation of the statement. She did not take the opportunity of rereading her statement until the morning of the hearing and had not reviewed the social work file, but her recollection was that when she stopped work on the day before H was born, November 12^th, the plan had been to apply for an urgent interim care order and she told me she had spoken to the police and sent an email to the emergency duty team. She said that she did not expect the police would go into the delivery room and remove H and that she would have expected that mother would have had the opportunity of holding H and that H would have had the opportunity of skin-to-skin contact with his mother.

48. Very little of this social worker's evidence was challenged on the grounds of inaccuracy or untruth, but her attitude to coming to court and giving evidence and the degree of her reported anxiety lead me to doubt her judgement and question her opinion. It is likely that she fears that she will be blamed in some way. Her recollection could not be supported by notes she had not made and her narrative may well have been overwritten by her anxiety. She had caused Mother to be registered as a missing person in the week before H's birth because Mother was only contacting her by text and did not want to meet face-to-face. SW1 told me that "we were concerned for her (Mother's) well-being", without explaining how her concerns about a dysfunctional relationship and poor mental health might warrant publicity on social media about search for a missing person.

49. At two significant points in this history information was communicated by telephone without any proper note of what was said being made or released available. The first was when the social worker spoke to the police on the night before H was born, when she provided information which must have set the tone for decisions made the next day. The second was on the day on which she prepared her statement, when she obtained all of her information by telephone. This statement gives the last picture of any local authority social work evaluation of the case: the team leader confined her statement, as requested by the court, for an explanation of the decision-making process behind the failure to apply to the court and the social worker appointed after the first had stepped down has provided twelve statements but these deal Mostly with placement searches and then her final statement is a review of the expert evidence. It was plainly not considered necessary by this social worker or her team leader to review the assessment of the case which had been made by the first social worker.

Placement search

50. There were four potential placements for H and Mother identified at different points in the early part of the case. The first was in the Stockport area and made known at the hearing on 17.12.21: mother was five weeks postnatal and did not feel able take that up on her own and in any event it was later withdrawn on receipt of information from the local authority. Some interest was shown by an agency with vacancies in Wigan and Rotherham but these were apparently no longer available by the time parents indicated on 10.1.22 that they would like to attend. The next was a potential mother and baby placement in the Paignton area and was lost or withdrawn: the best that could be said was that it was filled by another family before it had been accepted. There was interest expressed by Symbol, in Kent, in April, but the father was not willing to take this up because he had secured employment and was doing what he could to support his family and I have not been told why mother was not able to go there. The local authority made it plain that this would introduce too much delay and did not support it. The social worker's statement dated 19.4.22 recorded that the mother was not then responding to phone calls from her.

51. It was clear in January that the information being provided by the local authority was deterring residential centres from making offers: see the social worker statement at C 38. I therefore set up the fact finding that took place in February to provide a factual basis on which a risk assessment could be made. The risk assessment that appears in the bundle at F19 (18.11.21) contains all the inaccuracies that I set out above, and more, including assertions about the parents trying to abscond or flee, a repetition of the inaccurate allegation from January 2021, described on 12.1.22 as "recent", whereby "Dad shot mum in the tummy", and that dad has convictions for explosives. Time was taken in the hearing looking at the risk assessment dated 19.1.22, F 40: the table of hazards at the end begins with exposure to air rifles, and exposure to explosives, with the column about impact warning that the child could die. This document was signed by the social worker and her manager on 24.2.22, the day after the fact finding had been completed and the schedule of facts agreed and the same date as the social worker statement C55 declaring that the risk assessment had been amended as agreed in court. It seems that the social work team was oblivious to the court's attempts to provide the parents with fair access to assessment.

52. After the social worker had given evidence and been cross-examined on this document, I was told that in fact she had remembered that a different document had been supplied to the residential assessment centres and that this was known as a CPAC placement request form. It was sent to me by email and says it was completed on 11.3.22. The text includes "removal at birth by police due to concerns parents would abscond with him" but is otherwise more accurate. The fact that the social worker did not know that she was answering questions on the wrong document supports my finding that the local authority never genuinely reassessed its view of the risk in this case.

53. In my judgment, there are several interplaying reasons why no residential assessment took place: the local authority was not enthusiastic about it and did not engage mother to help her approach any prospect with confidence, and the mother clearly suffered setbacks in her emotional well-being following the removal of H and again when the father went into custody in February.

54. It seems that courts cannot stress loudly enough that a baby is only to be separated from his mother following birth if there is no other arrangement that will keep him safe. The object of care proceedings should be to give a child his best opportunity of being brought up by his parents but too often the impression is given that the object is to give a child a life in a family regarded as better than his own.

What is the evidence that satisfied the local authority that these parents could not care for their child?

55. Dr CH, chartered clinical psychologist, provided a report dated 25 May 2022 which contains his assessment of both parents. It is striking that there is more information about the parents' background in this report than there is in any of the social work evidence.

56. Both parents cooperated fully with the assessment after some difficulties making the appointments. Mother attended her appointment on 28 March 2022 although the social worker was having difficulty contacting her in April.

57. Mother was brought up by her parents together until she was about 11 and then on their separation remained with her mother before moving to her father. At about age 13 she went into foster care and then a care home, returning to live with her father at the age of 15 until she was 17. She does not appear to have benefited from any of the arrangements for young people leaving care: the rules about services for care leavers are defined so that a young person who has been in care for at least 13 weeks since the age of 14, benefits. She was exposed to domestic violence and drug use at home, and she found her relationship with her father much easier than that with her mother. She was able to identify poor childhood experiences as relevant to her current functioning. Dr Hobson identified evidence of persistent emotional dysregulation and relationship problems, exacerbated by substance abuse and his opinion is that she has features of borderline personality disorder, complex PTSD, and a stimulant use disorder. All of these problems have negative implications for her ability to parent a child. His conclusion is that a child in her care is at significantly increased risk, compared to a parent without her problems, of emotional harm and neglect. Dr Hobson identified interventions that might help her if she was willing to engage with them.

58. In particular, I note what Dr Hobson says at para 6.40 in relation to Mother's experience of H's removal, which she found distressing and traumatic, and what she said at 6.58 about her fear and distrust of social services, her belief that it was wrong for H to be taken from her immediately after the birth (6.59) and her understanding that she is repeatedly turned down for residential assessment because of the risk assessment (6.64).

59. Father's mother died when he was eight and he remained in the care of his father until he was about 16 when he moved out, apparently because of his father's strict approach to rules, but he remains on generally reasonable terms with his father. He was apparently not involved with social services but would have been referred to them after leaving his term in a Youth Offenders Institution, despite the local authority's repeated assertion that he was also a care leaver. He went to prison at age 18 and over a period of weeks during the course of these proceedings, but he had at the time of the report secured a good job at a semiconductor plant in Newport. (He is currently working for Tesco.) His probation officer describes him as "no problem whatsoever, keen to engage, trying to get himself together." Dr Hobson's opinion is that Father most likely had conduct disorder in his adolescence and continues to evidence antisocial personality disorder traits and he has used substances, in particular alcohol, as a maladaptive coping mechanism to cope with stress. He has more insight into the local authority concerns and more motivation in terms of working with social care than Mother. There is no evidence that he poses a direct risk of violence to children but he does present a risk of assault against adult males whom he perceives to be threatening him. A child in his care would be at increased risk, compared to a parent without a history of substance abuse and ASPD traits, of emotional harm and neglect. There is a further risk of physical harm in the context of his relationship with Mother whilst their substance abuse persists.

60. At para 7.40 Dr CH reports Father as saying that his main triggers for distress are housing problems and Mother's mental health and behaviour: he feels she has given up hope of having H.

61. Dr CH observed patterns in Father's relationship behaviour in that three of his partners have used cocaine, as he does, and gave his opinion that he would find it difficult to stop drinking altogether although he would be able to do so if sufficiently motivated and it would be beneficial since most of his offending appears to have been influenced by the use of alcohol. Neither parent would intend any harm to a child in their care but a child being brought up in the context of their current lifestyle would be at risk of neglect and emotional harm. Whilst Father had more insight than Mother, and was to an extent justified in his frustration about her actions not helping their case he does not yet have sufficient insight into his own risks: behaviour will not change unless you understand why you need to change and Father is emotionally avoidant i.e. not able to look into himself and see the faults as well as the positives. This may be a mechanism which he has developed during his upbringing as a means of coping with his environment.

62. Father may be able to develop insight and modify his behaviours, but there would be scope for further arguments if he and Mother were to perceive each other as criticising them.

63. Mother would be assisted by therapy to address her behaviour and the therapies that are recommended for borderline personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder differ from each other (because there are separate bodies of research for each) but either form of therapy would be likely to improve the symptoms of the other. Therapy would be likely to take between nine and 18 months of weekly sessions to achieve long-term improvements and would not be effective unless she had reduced her drug use to or near to abstinence (for example, drinking alcohol at the weekend but abstinent during the week.) She would need to have begun to make changes in her own behaviour which are not currently in evidence: on the contrary there have been recent reports of volatile behaviour.

64. Dr CH's evidence about Mother's ability to engage in therapy whilst caring for her child is important. He would not support H being returned to her care for her to undergo therapy because of the evidence about the length of time and continuing up to date of her non-engagement with services, her continued volatility, and her low level of adherence to arrangements for contact and bail conditions: the risk for a child in her care at the moment is too high for H to be placed with her in order for her to undergo therapy. He said that it has to be remembered that therapy does not always work, although in most cases therapy would be helpful and supportive for employment or caring because it helps subjects to manage their behaviour and small interventions can have positive effects even if full recovery is not achieved. He agreed that therapy can be temporarily destabilising and it can be difficult to go back to caring for a child in the short period following the therapy session but said that it can be very positive to engage in therapy whilst caring for a child. He would not recommend that she resume care of H now and then undertake therapy. However, it is always better to start therapy sooner rather than later because that is when there will be most impact on the symptoms of anxiety. Mother's priority should be to work on her substance abuse because she will not progress other forms of work whilst continuing to use and so blunting her emotions, but there are no other reasons to prevent her accessing proper services. Services such as IAPS, Vita Minds and Let's Talk might help her to stabilise her emotions in order to be ready to undertake therapy, and an approach based on treating complex PTSD would need a period of stability to be achieved first: stabilisation is not regarded as necessary for treating borderline personality disorder.

65. Dr CH 's view was that ideally a residential assessment would have been indicated: it is easier to begin and undertake therapy with a child in your care than it is to have a child returned to your care and he agreed that Mother had worked well with him. He accepted that she had been adversely affected by the means of removing H from her and that she had been extremely stressed by the involvement of social services. He emphasised that it would be important for her to engage consistently with any therapy that was made available but agreed that she had engaged well with him.

66. I find, on the basis of Dr CH's opinion about residential assessment, the current evidence of mother's significantly reduced substance abuse, and the evidence throughout the contact notes of her ability to accept advice and guidance, that if she had gone into a residential assessment with the provision of therapy, she might very well have succeeded in caring for her son. It is certain that her chances would have been better than they are now, and that the opportunity was lost because of the way the first social worker's evidence was presented and because of mother's mental health deterioration following H's removal.

67. Ms C is an independent social worker commissioned by the local authority to assess the parents. Errors in the evidence are repeated in her introduction, notably the idea that Father shot Mother with the air rifle whilst she was pregnant and that he made threats to kill the social worker. The written report recommends only letter box contact after adoption, based on what she had been told about the Father threatening to abduct H and to kill the social worker. She told me that the errors in the introduction would make no difference to her recommendation, but that if in fact there was no evidence about the father threatening to abduct H and kill the social worker, she would not restrict her recommendation to letterbox contact. She conducted a PAMS assessment at the end of which she does not recommend that H be placed in the care of either or both his parents. She identifies the issues in the relationship between the parents which she says appears to be abusive, their use of drugs and alcohol and their, particularly the mother's, mental health as barriers to their being able to provide good enough care. Her view was that neither parent had acknowledged the concerns or been able to begin to address them. However, she said that both parents had a good understanding of what was required to provide good enough parenting and her pie chart representation of their skills at F 79 shows that they reached the priority criterion in 71% of the domains measured. Although that would seem to suggest that there was scope to develop parental skills, she did not think there was merit in any further assessment. She acknowledged that the parents engaged well when they met her and that they have knowledge but said they would not be able to put it into practice: they have in fact demonstrated in contact a range of skills and knowledge, but her conclusion was based on their use of stimulants and the management of their emotions. Her assessment was much more positive than the social worker's view measured following the initial screening tool. However, the areas which remain concern health care, child guidance and control, and parent support and resources. The section on Child Healthcare fails to give credit for both parents' reduction in their drug use and in my view places weight on inaccurate information about pregnancy: the parent independent living skills is negatively weighted because the parents do not have their own accommodation: Parent Homecare Safety largely duplicates what is said under Child Guidance and Control and is repeated under Parent Healthcare.

68. The overall assessment is negative largely because of the issues of emotional dysregulation and behaviour in the context of stimulant use and interpersonal conflict.

69. Expert evidence relating to the parents' drug and alcohol use has been obtained on three different occasions for each of them. The observed antisocial behaviour and emotional dysregulation recorded in the papers is generally in the context of drug or alcohol use.

70. Father had used chronic excessive levels of alcohol in the test period between the end of August 2021 and the end of November 2021: there is no evidence that this had continued in the three-month period before the test reported on the 4.4.22 and it was not tested again in August because the court was satisfied that there was no evidence to suggest that he was drinking. There was no evidence that he had used cannabis or cocaine after the end of September 2021 and even in September 2021 no metabolites of cocaine been detected so that cocaine use could not be confirmed:7.1.1 E14. There is no evidence of any use at all on the next test in March 2022. In the final test reported on 30.8.22 there was no evidence of cannabis use and the evidence in relation to cocaine is set out in tabular form at E177 and shows no detectable metabolite between the start of July and the start of August and cocaine below the recommended cut-off level: these results do not provide enough evidence to suggest the active consumption of cocaine during the first month before testing (July) and the presence of cocaine during that month could be explained by passive exposure or from previous consumption. The report explains that drugs can still be traced in hair when someone stops using the drug. I find that Father has not used cannabis at all in the last year. The evidence in relation to cocaine is more difficult: he asserts that he has not used it, but I have to accept the opinion on E184 that it is likely that cocaine had been consumed occasionally at low levels between the start of April and the start of May 2022. The opinion on that page accepts that the source of the detected cocaine between the start of May and the start of July could be from the previous consumption of cocaine prior to those months and the information at page E152 is that drugs can be detected in the hair for up to five or six months after a donor has ceased consumption. I find that Father has consumed a low level of cocaine on one or more occasion in April 2022 but not since then. (A further test report received after the hearing concluded, dated 21.11.22, showed no evidence of drug use between mid-July and mid October, indicating abstinence over this period: however, there was an elevated EtG reading (alcohol marker) but no EtPa (another alcohol marker, indicating chronic excessive alcohol use in this period.)

71. The test evidence relating to the mother's use does not support excessive alcohol use in the period to the end of November 2021 but it does indicate excessive alcohol use between mid December 2021 mid-March 2022 and there was no testing for alcohol in August 2022.

72. The excessive alcohol use following H's removal and during the period of Father's incarceration can be understood in that context.

73. There was no evidence of cannabis in the first period tested (E45) but evidence of low-level cocaine use over the three months before the sample was taken: in the second sample, there was evidence of low-level cannabis use and medium level cocaine use between mid December 2021 and mid-March 2022. In the final test, reported on 30.8.22, there was no evidence of the use of cannabis and evidence of the use of cocaine on a declining level: of the four metabolites tested, benzoylecgonine, which is a hydrolysis product formed in the presence of water and usually observed when the donor has consumed or been amongst people who have consumed cocaine and so can be explained as a product of passive consumption, does not firmly establish consumption, anhydroecgonine is absent in the last two months tested, norcocaine (which is a true metabolite and only produced when cocaine has been consumed by the individual) was only measured above the cut-off level in April, and cocaethylene was detected at reducing levels almost to the cut off level from May 2022 and possibly earlier, bearing in mind the evidence that drugs can be detectable for up to 5 to 6 months after consumption has ceased.

The parents' evidence

74. The parents each gave their evidence well and genuinely. Mother recognises that she needs therapy and has begun to take steps to obtain it. She has, importantly, begun by reducing her drug use: she is more compliant now with the medication to treat her mental health, which I think we can characterise as conditions of low mood and depression, and she had been referred for an assessment on 18.11.22 for talking therapy. She has an appointment with CGL (Change Grow Live) for support with her drug reduction and she says that her relationship with Father has improved and they do not argue anymore because her mental health is improving and she is able to take steps to walk away from an argument. She thinks that her ability to work with professionals is getting better but she recognises that there is also a negative impact to those encounters and told me that some meetings had made her extremely distressed and upset. She had been told that the plan was to remove H from her care when he was born, but initially the social worker told her that if she did not separate from Father the baby would be taken off her and then she was told that the problem was with her own mental health and she felt that "it was going nowhere". She was in contact with the social worker and the midwife pre-birth by text and she had never indicated that she would "flee." She had not understood that she would have no time with her baby at all and then suddenly in the delivery room she was given a chance to kiss H on the head and then he was taken away. The police came in after she had been stitched and Father was very calm and supportive. She knows she was in a really bad way both then and until this Summer. She recognised that it is very late to try to make changes but that has begun and that she is willing to have therapy. In cross examination she explained that she "did cocaine so as not feel so horrible": the incident in September 2021 had been alcohol fuelled - they had been due to be viewing a flat and the social worker had told the council that they were in a domestically abusive relationship and then their application for housing as a couple was closed down. Father had accommodation on his own at Severn Beach and she went to stay with him because she fell out with her mother. Her mother had had enough of professionals coming into her home, in particular the social worker who would say that she was going to visit and then did not. In terms of assessment, she was sure she had agreed to go to Symbol but she had been turned down. She had not done an online parenting course but pointed out that they are expensive (parents pay £75.95 to do the Triple P program online). She resiled from any complaint against Father in relation to the incident in July, saying that her mother had told her to say what is recorded at G318 or she would throw her out. Her version of the incidents in which the police were called on the three different dates in July to two different addresses was to avoid responsibility and was not easily tested in this court in the absence of witnesses to the events recorded by the police. The last of these police records was on 6.10.22 and she attributed it to a recent change in medication: the police record at G302 says that she was emotional but calm and no offences were disclosed, and we do not know who made the call to police, but the implication is that she had had a disagreement with Father. Now the medication has taken effect she says she feels like a different person. She told me, with an apology across the court to Father, that she would leave him if it meant she could have H because H means more to her, and she had tried breaking up because the social worker said she should. She has no trust in social services as a result of her own experiences in care when she was failed by being put in a home where she was abused. She said, with justification, that poor mental health does not stop you caring for a child. She does not accept that her relationship is domestically abusive although she understands that she feels worse when they argue and she can see that the relationship was unhealthy but it is getting better. She recognises that cocaine makes her feel better in the short term but worse the next day and that that is a vicious circle: it is not making her better. She worked it out in July and she has stopped using. She told me that she knows that it seems too late but it is very hard to get out of an addiction and she ended up that way because she had her child taken from her.

75. I find that although Mother did have poor mental health in the sense of episodes of low mood and unregulated distress before H was born, that her mental well-being since then has been adversely affected by the circumstances of his removal and her resort to alcohol and drugs following that has inhibited her from taking up available support until very recently. She has a coherent understanding of her addiction, which is psychological rather than physical, but she has not yet understood the reasons for her relationship with Father being categorised as abusive.

76. Father accepted that he and Mother do argue, but said that generally they get on well, they have always clicked and that their arguments tend to be about her mental health, difficulties with her medication, and her unwillingness to get up and get on with things when she is feeling low. About H, he said that contact was amazing, H says "Mumma" and "Dadda," he grins, he loves seeing his parents. Separation and the court process have been very hard, they destroy one as a person and those processes have impacted heavily on their relationship. The way in which H was removed ripped them apart and completely destroyed mother's mental health. He has never seen anyone as badly affected as she was after that.

77. Challenged about what he had said in the delivery room ("SW1's fucked, I'll sort it."), he said he did not remember saying it but they had known that she had made reports about them and it was obvious that she was behind the decision to remove H. He was not threatening her physical safety. He did not say that he was going to post anything on Facebook, but said "why shouldn't I" rather than "I would." He had neither posted anything nor taken any steps to locate the social worker or H. He couldn't explain why the hair strand test in August showed cocaine and he has not used any at all. He has completed the referral form for CGL, but there are no parenting courses available anymore and he has been told by Splitz that he is not suitable for their service because he does not accept being an abuser. He agreed that there were arguments in his relationship but the person who dealt with his call said that he was not eligible if he did not accept domestic violence. (There used to be a service known as Resolution which worked with men who did not accept that they were the perpetrators of domestic violence or abuse: that is clearly something which father needs, just as mother needs to engage with an organisation such as Next Link or the Freedom Project.)

78. He has referred himself to CGL because he recognises that he needs support to remain abstinent from alcohol and to avoid relapse. He accepts Dr Hobson's recommendation about intervention and said that his eyes are open: the incident in September was alcohol-related.

79. Father has quite a lot of insight into the issues in the case and the his relationship with Mother: he thinks that she has got to the end of the grieving process and he asked for the opportunity to prove that they can care. He would support mother going to a residential unit alone and it would be even better if they could go together. He accepted that the offences he committed in September 2021 when police were called to his property were very serious, and did not seek to diminish them. He was asked about the occasion when mother was distressed at Bristol Temple Meads during her pregnancy: he was not there and she was brought to his home after assessment by the mental health team and it was considered that she was safe to be left with him. He acknowledged that Mother says a lot of things she does not mean when her mental health is poor and that H should not be exposed to that behaviour, but he can see that recently she is starting to do really well. She had had a bad episode on 24^th October when he was talking to the social worker.

80. There is a pattern in the police record of the parties and each of their parents calling the police when they are in conflict with each other. When Mother is upset that behaviour immediately de-escalates when the police arrive. This has to stop. It is a waste of police resources and it allows the individuals to continue not to take responsibility for their own actions and relationships.

81. The Guardian, Ms Lees, spoke to her report. She accepted that mother's better routine with her medication was a step in the right direction and that any progress that the parents made would contribute to better chances for themselves and for H. She has signposted them to courses and their success will depend on their ability to recognise the risks that they present. She agreed that both parents love H very much, and when she had supervised and supported contact it was clear that mother could take advice and guidance. She did not consider that there was any gap in the evidence that needed to be filled by means of a residential assessment.

82. In relation to H's removal, she had only one comparable experience (and that was in quite different circumstances) of a baby being removed literally at birth. She considered that the removal should have been the subject of a multiagency decision, and she observed that the police have refused to take a PPO in the past when she has asked for one. She had had no issues herself with Father: if he disagrees with her he is not difficult and she agreed that we had heard him remaining calm in the recording of the conversation with the police at the hospital. It is her recommendation that the adoptive parents, if the court makes that decision, meet the birth parents and she believes they would both manage that meeting appropriately. She also recommends if the adopters feel it is sustainable that there be contact post adoption but does not consider that an order is necessary.

83. Having heard all the evidence, she remained of the view that the only way in which H could safely be cared for by his mother would be with 24/7 support. The problem is with the unpredictability of mother's behaviour: it is difficult to mitigate against the risk of volatile behaviour. On the other hand, father is able to modify his behaviour, he can hold down a job, he can come into court.

Closing submissions

84. The local authority resists any proposal or application for further assessment, quoting Re S, 2014 EWCC B44 and Re J 2009: parents do not have the right to choose the form of assessment or to insist on being given the opportunity to put a positive case. It must be right that the court determines the form of an assessment: in this case, the court considered that a residential assessment would be appropriate not least because the parents' accommodation was insecure, and its virtue would have been, as Ms Armstrong pointed out, that without it the ordinary day-to-day interaction which is what a child lives with most of the time is not observed. As Dr CH said, the ideal would have been for mother and H to have gone into residential assessment, and the normal practice with a young first-time mother with difficulties and lack of family support would be for mother and child to be maintained together in a residential assessment centre or a mother and baby foster placement. However, at this stage, there needs to be a solid evidence-based reason for thinking that the parents would be able to make changes in the child's timescale, and in this case the local authority says that the evidence of the independent experts is that there is no such basis. The evidence is that there continue to be incidents which reflect the instability in the parental relationship.

85. Submissions on behalf of the parents emphasised the stark choice open to the court. The parents are realistic enough to accept that H cannot be returned to their care without further assessment, and on behalf of the mother it was accepted that she was struggling with her mental health before H was born and that the relationship with the father was volatile, but she says that the circumstances of H's removal compounded their underlying difficulties and blocked her from moving on. It is only as time has passed and she has begun to come to terms with the trauma of that removal that she has also begun to address her issues. On her behalf, it is positive that she was able to engage cooperatively with Dr CH in May, and important to remember that he assesses her as having complex PTSD alongside a stimulant use disorder. However, she has taken steps to engage both with access to talking therapies and drug support, both of which allow the court to review Dr CH's opinion at E121 that her prognosis was poor due to continued cocaine use and lack of engagement with professional services: the report did not in itself prevent the court allowing that opportunity. In relation to Ms C, it was argued that, as she had completed her work without having had the findings schedule and the judgment, there was a real chance that she would have had a better understanding of the parents' situation if she had had them: they had not been assessed as being without hope. The social work evidence provided by the first social worker has not really helped the court and the current social worker has spent limited amounts of time with the parents and her evidence depended on the work of the experts. Whilst mother accepted that she had not taken up two opportunities (Southport, a long way from home soon after she had given birth, and Symbol, when the local authority was not supportive of any delay) she seeks now to have that opportunity and regrets not having addressed her problems at an early stage. Although there would be delay in further assessment, H is still only one year old and delay would be proportionate to the impact on his life.

86. The submission on behalf of the father began with an invitation to the court to make some specific findings, and I do so. His case was at one with the mother's and I was invited to extend the interim care order to allow an opportunity for an application under section 38 (6) to be brought on the basis of a judgment. It is known that there are places available but it is not be possible to make an application without disclosure of the case papers. Decisions would be delayed, but delay has to be balanced against the impact on H's life: if successful, the delay would be immaterial; if it fails, delay would be short, perhaps as little as six or 12 weeks. It would be wrong to ignore the way in which these proceedings started: both parents have been grieving and the circumstances of H's removal are bound to have caused emotional difficulties. The narrative about Father which began with the allegations about threats to kill the social worker and follow her car, which had not been borne out by any evidence, has unfairly prevented H having the opportunity of being cared for by his parents. The current social worker has had no difficulty with him, nor have the Guardian, Dr CH, or the independent social worker. He is clean of drugs and wisely aiming to work with CGL to avoid relapse. When he turned down the opportunity of assessment at Symbol (his solicitors' email dated 22^nd April) he had just secured employment having come out prison on 30.3.22 and he believed that the independent social worker's report was going well. Both parents have made progress with their drug use both are now engaging with services.

87. The Guardian's closing address recognised that the circumstances of H's birth have not been adequately explained and that assessment of the sort that is now contemplated would have been warranted at the outset. However, the guardian's view is it is not required now and there is no gap in the evidence. The court would have to be satisfied that it was safe and that it was necessary, and counsel went through the elements of section 13 of the Children and Families Act 2014. The Guardian thought there was little point in assessing either parent individually if they remained in relationship. The Guardian says that nothing other than adoption will do in the circumstances.

Conclusion

88. I disagree with the proposition that it would have been inappropriate to assess one parent without the other even though they remained in a relationship, either at the outset or now: in many cases, one parent is assessed and sometimes the other joins the assessment at a later stage. The Guardian appeared to concede that proper assessment would have been warranted in the early stages of this case, and all parties now agree that the circumstances of H's removal were wrong.

89. I make the following explicit findings:

1) Father did not make threats to kill the social worker;

2) Father did not make threats to trace or find any professional or any placement in which H was living;

3) Father did not make any threat to the social worker's safety;

4) Father has taken no steps to undermine the placement

5) Father has not breached his undertaking to the court

6) Mother has an existing mistrust of social services as a result of her own early experiences in care and enlarged by her experiences surrounding H's birth;

7) Mother was significantly affected by the circumstances of H's removal and her response to those events was a barrier to her initial engagement with services and to effecting change for herself: this was natural, and it is not possible within the evidence to identify how long that response was effective;

8) both parents have demonstrated that they can work well with professionals, including the expert psychologist, the independent social worker, the current social worker, hospital personnel, the police officer who attended inside the delivery room, their lawyers, and the court;

9) the method of H's removal was entirely wrong and was not justified on the basis of any information held by social services or the police;

10) H was not placed with foster carers until 18 November 2021, day six: until then he was in a hospital setting without a primary carer;

11) H was deprived of skin-to-skin contact at birth and will have lost the opportunities of reassurance and acquired immunity that that is considered to provide.

12) The parents' relationship appears to have improved or progressed and it is likely that the mother is maturing and will continue to be better able to manage her emotions and her behaviour than in the past.

13) Ideally, and with the benefit of hindsight, there should have been a residential assessment or family foster placement, to give the mother an opportunity to demonstrate if she could care for H, with the provision of whatever therapy might, at that stage, have been considered appropriate for her.

14) I do not find that the parents need to separate.

90. The evidence which informs the assessment of whether or not these parents can safely care for their son only falls to be considered if the threshold criterion in section 31 is passed. The facts set out in the schedule agreed on February 23 cross the threshold. The relevant assessment evidence is Dr Hobson's opinion, the independent social worker's report, and the hair strand testing.

91. There are three threads to the problems which the parents have to overcome and they are closely interlinked. They are antisocial behaviour outside the home, the difficulties in the parents' relationship, and the use of drugs or alcohol.

1) The Father has a history of criminal offending which resulted in his imprisonment as an 18 year old and again most recently during these proceedings. Notably, as far as the local authority was concerned at the outset, was a conviction described (misleadingly shortly) as "involving explosives", which combined with other offences dealt with on the same occasion resulted in a sentence of five years detention: furthermore, he was convicted during the course of these proceedings of offences involving assaulting an emergency worker and using racist language. Mother has had poor mental health throughout her teenage years, manifested in poor emotional control, which has brought her to the attention of members of the public and the emergency services from time to time. The detail of some of these incidents is disputed, but the relevant point for the court is that each of the parents continues to behave in ways which impact on other people and lead them into contact with the police. Some of those contacts are on the level of unnecessary or nuisance calls to the police to settle family disputes, but they demonstrate that neither is able to avoid conflict, so that any child in their care would be likely to be exposed to aggression and disruption.

2) This behaviour continues within the parents' relationship: there is no doubt that they are able to be loving and supportive of each other, and have been observed to be so both in court and in the hospital, but they also argue and many of the contacts with police arise from calls which one or other has made in the course of those disputes. Mother's evidence showed that she does not understand the damage that is caused by this negative relationship behaviour: she recognised that she felt bad at the time but not that there was any long-lasting effect, and consequently she would be unlikely to recognise the impact of conflict between the parents on a child in their care. The current social worker's view was that the relationship should come to an end so that Mother could have the opportunity of a new and better relationship: it is not for me to say whether the relationship should continue, but there is no basis on which I could say that it should or must end and I disagree that the hope of a better relationship is automatically a good reason for leaving a relationship: where a relationship is bad for either party, thought has to be given as to whether it can be improved or whether that party would be better off single.

3) This is all in the context of, and to some extent fuelled by, the use of substances to change mood. The Father has drunk excessively and a feature of his offending has been his use of alcohol: he told me at his court appearance in the Magistrates' Court when he was in custody following his conviction for the offences in September that he had no memory of his behaviour and having watched the body worn video footage he was ashamed and would change. Mother has used cocaine to blunt her emotions following the removal of H and to help her feel better: she recognised in interview with Dr CH that it did her no good because she felt so awful afterwards and she has resolved to stop using cocaine.

92. The court has to make decisions today on the basis of the evidence available now and what sensible deductions about the future can be derived from that. I cannot say that Father has put his offending behaviour behind him, because we are still awaiting the criminal process arising from the incident involving Mother's mother in the summer. I do think that there is progress in the parents' relationship, but there have still been incidents of which social services have become aware in the last month. Both of these suggest that it is likely that there will continue to be incidents in which the parents become involved in conflict with each other or members of their families: exposure to such incidents is damaging to a child, and involvement in them leaves the child neglected. I am satisfied that both parents have taken significant steps towards addressing their drug and alcohol use, and this may be the means of ending or at least diminishing the patterns of behaviour that cause so much concern. It is the only factor that they could reasonably be expected to address on their own without forms of support which have not yet been available. Mother's mental health appears to be stabilising with her reliable use of her medication, and whilst its exacerbation over the last year has been due to events outside her control it has continued to be a problem in relation to her ability to engage with services, to help herself, and to be in a position to care for her child.

93. I had hoped that the local authority would offer the parents a full apology: that has not happened but the current social worker has had the grace to offer her own personal apology in the courtroom. I cannot expect the parents to forgive all that has taken place even with the sympathy and understanding that has been expressed by the Guardian and other people involved in the case. I did expect a more effective search for a residential assessment to take place, not least because the local authority should have realised that it needed to make up for its mistakes.

94. I have had to consider whether the initial unfairness in this case and its impact on the parents led to a conclusion that the parents should have the opportunity of residential assessment that they were denied at the outset. If they had not been assessed, any decision would have been made on the prejudicial characterisation of the case made by the local authority before birth. However, they were assessed, and the assessment was not good enough for reasons which, whatever labels are given to them by the independent social worker, are explained by the assessment of Dr CH and continue to be relevant: the parents continue to come into conflict with each other and other people, drawing attention from the police and demonstrating that, despite the strides they have made in employment and reduced drug use, they are not yet stable enough to provide safe care for their child and there is not quite enough evidence for me to think it likely that residential assessment would be ordered on a section 38(6) application.

95. I know the parents will be devastated by this decision and that it would be little comfort to remind them that the Guardian had been hopeful that things would have ended differently, but I too had hoped that after a poor start the case might have got back on track to allow H to live with his parents throughout his childhood.

96. The Guardian, Mrs Lees, told me that she has been involved in her current role or similar work since before the Children Act was introduced. (So have I.) She has referred the case and the circumstances of H's removal to her seniors at Cafcass. I hope that this will lead to some policy work involving Cafcass, local authorities, police and hospitals, so that some proper understanding of the different agencies' roles can be achieved and so that the circumstances of this child's removal will never be repeated.

97. I did not consider that the documents originally submitted in support of the placement application were in a form which would allow me to consider the application. The papers held by the court are available to the adopted person in the future and they should be fairly and accurately compiled. To its credit, the local authority worked hard to reissue the application with revised documents in time for me to consider the application 10 days after the conclusion of the evidence. I have to consider it taking into account all of the factors in the checklist in the Adoption and Children Act 2002, which include the welfare factors and the impact on the child ceasing to be a member of his birth family. I cannot come to any conclusion in circumstances in which I have found that these parents are not able to meet H's needs and there is no other family member who is able to do so other than that he must be placed in another family on a permanent basis and that that is best secured through adoption. I therefore grant a care order and an order authorising the local authority to place him for adoption.

98. Apart from the issues relevant to the decision, there have been some issues in the preparation of the case which need to be avoided in future.

· Conversations in which relevant information is exchanged between professionals must be recorded or noted

· all parties, but particularly local authorities because of their special responsibilities, need to consider the evidence as it comes in and be prepared to reconsider their positions at every stage in the case

· the email dated 30.11.21 from the hospital was a very significant piece of information and should not have been hidden away in section K but included in section C alongside the statement of the head of nursing

· no advocate should approach a five-day listing without having seen the witness template and making sure that it was reasonably accurate

· it remains unclear whether there was a strategy meeting on November 12, 2021: we should never have the position in which a meeting is not recorded, and if there is no record of such a meeting it ought to be accepted that it did not take place

· each party is entitled to put its case to the other parties, but where a party has not challenged a piece of evidence it is not necessary to put that to them to gain explicit agreement

· there is very little point in putting the detail of an expert report to a lay party: he or she may disagree with the conclusion, but is not qualified to comment on the expert content

· judgments given at earlier stages of the proceedings must be included in the bundle and made available to experts

I have drafted this judgment attempting to achieve anonymity in the event that I am asked to publish it or part of it.

HHJ Cronin

16.11.22

Schedule of findings as set out in judgment of HHJ Cronin dated 21^st November 2022

The following are findings made by HHJ Cronin in respect of the parents as invited by their counsel. This document is not to be considered in any future proceedings in isolation and is to be read in conjunction with the overall judgment of that date.

1) The Father did not make threats to kill the social worker;

2) The Father did not make threats to trace or find any professional or any placement in which the child was living;

3) The Father did not make any threat to the social worker's safety;

4) The Father has taken no steps to undermine the placement;

5) The Father has not breached his undertaking to the court;

6) Though he asserted he had not used cocaine as demonstrated by hair strand testing, the court found that The Father did consume a low level of cocaine on one or more occasions in April 2022 but not since then;

7) The Mother did not stop pushing during delivery when told that her baby would be removed: The child did not have to be medically resuscitated: The child was not treated for cannabis and cocaine withdrawal;

8) The Mother has an existing mistrust of social services as a result of her own early experiences in care and enlarged by her experiences surrounding the child's birth;

9) The Mother was significantly affected by the circumstances of the child's removal and her response to those events was a barrier to her initial engagement with services and to effecting change for herself: this was natural, and it is not possible within the evidence to identify how long that response was effective;

10) both parents have demonstrated that they can work well with professionals, including the expert psychologist, the independent social worker, the current social worker, hospital personnel, the police officer who attended inside the delivery room, their lawyers, and the court;

11) the method of the child's removal was entirely wrong and was not justified on the basis of any information held by social services or the police;

12) The child was not placed with foster carers until 18 November 2021, day six: until then he was in a hospital setting without a primary carer;

13) The child was deprived of skin to skin contact at birth and will have lost the opportunities of reassurance and acquired immunity that that is considered to provide;

14) The parents' relationship appears to have improved or progressed and it is likely that the mother is maturing and will continue to be better able to manage her emotions and her behaviour than in the past;

15) Ideally, and with the benefit of hindsight, there should have been a residential assessment or family foster placement, to give the mother an opportunity to demonstrate if she could care for the child, with the provision of whatever therapy might, at that stage, have been considered appropriate for her;

16) The judge did not find that the parents need to separate;

17) There are three threads to the problems which the parents have to overcome and they are closely interlinked: they are antisocial behaviour outside the home, the difficulties in the parents' relationship, and the use of drugs and/or alcohol;

18) The Father has a history of criminal offending which resulted in his imprisonment as an 18 year old and again most recently during these proceedings: notably, as far as the local authority was concerned at the outset, was a conviction described (misleadingly shortly) as "involving explosives", which combined with other offences dealt with on the same occasion resulted in a sentence of five years detention: furthermore, he was convicted during the course of these proceedings of offences involving assaulting an emergency worker and using racist language: The Mother has had poor mental health throughout her teenage years, manifested in poor emotional control, which has brought her to the attention of members of the public and the emergency services from time to time: the detail of some of these incidents is disputed, but the relevant point for the court is that each of the parents continues to behave in ways which impact on other people and lead them into contact with the police: some of those contacts are on the level of unnecessary or nuisance calls to the police to settle family disputes, but they demonstrate that neither parent is able to avoid conflict, so that any child in their care would be likely to be exposed to aggression and disruption;

19) This behaviour continues within the parents' relationship: there is no doubt that they are able to be loving and supportive of each other, and have been observed to be so both in court and in the hospital, but they also argue and many of the contacts with police arise from calls which one or other has made in the course of those disputes: The Mother's evidence showed that she does not understand the damage that is caused by this negative relationship behaviour: she recognised that she felt bad at the time but not that there was any long lasting effect, and consequently she would be unlikely to recognise the impact of conflict between the parents on a child in their care: the current social worker's view was that the relationship should come to an end so that The Mother could have the opportunity of a new and better relationship: it is not for the Judge to say whether the relationship should continue, but there is no basis on which she could say that it should or must end and she disagreed with the idea that the hope of a better relationship is automatically a good reason for leaving a relationship: where a relationship is bad for either party, thought has to be given as to whether it can be improved or whether that party would be better off single;

20) This (relationship) is all in the context of, and to some extent fuelled by, the use of substances to change mood: the Father has drunk excessively and a feature of his offending has been his use of alcohol: he told me at his court appearance in the Magistrates' Court when he was in custody following his conviction for the offences in September that he had no memory of his behaviour and having watched the body worn video footage he was ashamed and would change: The Mother has used cocaine to blunt her emotions following the removal of the child and to help her feel better: she recognised in interview with Dr Hobson that it did her no good because she felt so awful afterwards and she has resolved to stop using cocaine;

21) The Judge found that the Father has not put his offending behaviour behind him: though there is progress in the parents' relationship, incidents in the last months might suggest there will continue to be incidents in which the parents become involved in conflict with each other or family members or their families; exposure to such incidents is damaging to a child, and involvement in them leaves the child neglected;

22) The Mother's mental health appears to be stabilizing with her reliable use of her medication, and whilst its exacerbation over the last year has been due to events outside her control, it has continued to be a problem in relation to her ability to engage with services, to help herself, and be in a position to care for her child;

23) The parents continue to come into conflict with each other and other people, drawing attention from the police and demonstrating that, despite the strides they have made in employment and reduced drug use, they are not yet stable enough to provide safe care for their child and there is not quite enough evidence for me to think it likely that a residential assessment would be ordered on a section 38(6) application.

BS21C50123 Judgment of 23.2.22 on facts to support application for s38(6)

1 H was born on [redacted], so he is now three months, or 14 weeks, old. He was removed from his parents at birth and continues to live with foster parents. Such a disruption to his right to family life must be justified by proportionate reference to the likelihood of significant harm occurring to him if no such intervention takes place. The parents submitted to an interim care order at the first hearing, recognising that the threshold for such an order is low and that the circumstances described in the evidence then available warranted some measures to be taken to safeguard H. The court approved that order under s38 of the Children Act 1989: the test is that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the circumstances would meet the criterion in section 31, that the child would be likely to suffer significant harm if no order were made. The section 31 threshold falls to be determined in a final hearing yet to be listed.

2 The case was listed on 23^rd and 24^th February for the Court to determine facts that would support applications for mother and baby or residential assessments and might go some way to determining threshold. This judgment recites some well-known law because it has not always been clear that familiarity with the law by all concerned could be taken for granted. In the event, an agreed schedule of facts (appended to this judgment) has been approved by the court and this judgment has not needed to go further than the agreement as to those facts. However, I have asked that it be provided alongside the agreed facts and risk assessment to provide a fuller framework for the search for placements for H.

3 Gloucestershire County Council has been represented today by counsel, Caleb Sayer; the mother, Mother, by counsel, Stuart Fuller; the father, by solicitor, Sinead Jest; and H through his Guardian, Sarah Lees, by counsel, Louise MacLynn. I have been confident that they each understood the task set by the court and had no need of my summary of the law. Their cooperative hard work, both today and in an advocates' meeting yesterday, has overcome practical difficulties thrown up by late disclosure and by illness, saved a whole day of court time, and, most importantly, achieved a fair factual basis for the next steps in the case without generating the further degree of conflict that might have arisen in a contested hearing, and I am very grateful to them.

4 The object of care proceedings is to ensure that children are protected from significant harm. No child can be safeguarded against all the vicissitudes of ordinary life. The best person to care for a child is his natural parent, so long as that parent can care for the child without risk to his moral or physical well-being. The state cannot improve on nature. The local authority's planning should be to maintain a child with his parents, if at all possible; to provide practical resources if that is necessary and proportionate; only to separate him from his parents if there is no other option that meets his welfare needs; and to continue to work towards reuniting him with his parents.

5 It has been established in a series of authorities that an interim care order on the basis of a plan that involves the separation of a child from his natural parents can only be made if the child's safety demands immediate separation. This is particularly important in the case of a newborn baby when removal will affect the formation and development of the bond between parent and child. Such a plan is only to be sanctioned where the child's physical safety or psychological or emotional welfare demands it and where the length and the likely consequences of the separation are a proportionate response to the risks which would arise if it did not occur. [1] The same principles must apply to other agencies, including the police and medical professionals.

6 The high standard of justification which must be shown by a local authority seeking an order involving separation requires it to inform the court of all available resources that might remove the need for separation. This is an ongoing duty and the local authority carries the responsibility of continuing to search for a resource that will allow the child to be reunited with his parent.

7 In H's case, searches were made for placements which would allow him to be reunited with his mother. A placement was identified in December but it was in the Liverpool area, and the mother did not feel able to take that up. The Court understood her reluctance to travel alone far from home in the immediate post-natal period. It was not anticipated that there would be no other option. At a further hearing on 20.1.21 the court was told that a mother and baby placement had been identified which the mother was preparing to take up, but the providers had withdrawn on receipt of information from the local authority that purported to explain the risks that H faces.

8 This was a risk assessment dated carried out by the local authority, dated 19.1.22, which has been shared with the providers of potential placements since then: no other provider has expressed an interest.

9 It is accepted that there is a shortage of mother and baby or residential placements but the Court has approved the similar placements of other children during the currency of this case, which suggests that it is the nature of the case or its description, rather than an absolute lack of placements, which has been the barrier to reunification.

10 H was removed at birth by Avon and Somerset Constabulary. The reason for this is described in the statement of Inspector S, dated 22.12.21, at G129. He says that he was approached by the local authority's emergency duty team on the morning of H's birth and he refers to information about the specialist treatment which the baby required and a fear that the baby would be removed from the hospital by his parents without having had that treatment. There is no other record of his decision-making process or what the social worker told the police. In fact, there is no evidence other than what the social worker says the police told them about a threat to remove H, and he did not require specialist treatment. All the information from the hospital describes the parents as acting entirely appropriately and respectfully at all times and showing gratitude for the help which they were afforded.

11 The justice of the local authority's action in asking the police to intervene and the decision of the police to remove H without even skin to skin contact with his mother will be the subject of decisions on other occasions and in other places.

12 There will be very few occasions in which a baby cannot be safe in his mother's arms in the delivery room in a hospital such as Southmead which is a centre of excellence and has responsibility for very large geographical area and a population of parents across the whole spectrum of ability and therefore a very high degree of expertise in keeping babies safe.

13 The local authority went on to arrange for H to be transferred from the Bristol hospital in which he had been born, and where his mother had been permitted to remain to recover from the birth even though she was not allowed even to see her son, to the hospital in Gloucester convenient to potential foster parents and the social workers at a time when the local authority held no parental responsibility for him.

14 A further indication of the local authority's approach that was conveyed to the court at a hearing and does not yet appear in the written evidence was that the social workers had refused to permit the parents to give H Christmas presents because they said there was a concern that such a present might conceal a tracking device which would allow the parents to locate the foster home.

15 Decisions which result in children being separated from their parents must be based on evidence [2], whether those decisions are being made by the court or by social services or a medical service. The assessment of risk must be based on evidence of facts which have occurred, from which it might be deduced that incidents might be repeated or that similar events might occur or that a natural consequence of an action might arise. For example, if an adult has been found to have previously assaulted a partner it might be reasonable to consider that there is a risk that he or she might assault the same person again, or get into a similar altercation with another person, or that a child who was present would be harmed by exposure to an assault on another person.

16 Evidence in the Family Court includes hearsay evidence, that is something which has been told to somebody even if the witness who saw something happen is not available. Evidence must always be scrutinised to see what it establishes: a bruise is not necessarily evidence of an assault or an assault by a specific person.

17 The standard of proof is on the balance of probabilities: is it more likely than not that what is alleged to have taken place happened?

18 The burden of proof is on the person making the allegation, in this case the local authority. The parents do not have to prove anything, but what they say in response to evidence may be taken into account by the person making the decision.

19 The court, and arguably any other decision maker, must take into account all the evidence in the context of all the evidence.

20 It is also helpful to remember that people tell lies for a range of reasons, that dishonesty does not automatically imply culpability and that accusations made between couples sometimes involve an element of tit for tat.

21 When the court makes a decision about a fact the effect is simple: either the court finds the fact proved, in which case all parties have to accept that it happened, or the court does not find the fact proved, in which case the legal effect is that what is alleged did not take place. It is not open to anyone to continue to assert that the event happened after such a finding or to rely on that event in the assessment of risk.

22 Where a court decides to make an order to protect a child, it is required to make the order which interferes to the least extent with the rights of all the parties. Similarly, it is incumbent on agencies such as local authorities to look for arrangements which would keep a child safe without interfering disproportionately with the rights of the other parties. A simple example is the scope to protect a child from the interaction between his parents by separating the parents from each other, enforced by an injunction if necessary, rather than removing the child from both his parents.

23 This hearing was fixed in order to look at the factual information that is available that is said to support the threshold criteria and the risk assessment that is being offered to potential providers of mother and baby placements. It is not the last opportunity for evidence relating to the threshold criteria to be put before the court, not least because there will be further expert assessments. The court took the view that if the content of the risk assessment was inaccurate and was deterring the providers of mother and baby placements it was essential for decisions to be made as to fact to support the risk assessment at this early stage.

24 The social worker, SW2, and her manager, SW1, had prepared a document labelled "Analysis of risk and judgement" dated 19.1.22, which was the document that led to the withdrawal of the offer of the mother and baby placement on that date. Its first line contained the supposed risk of the parents fleeing with the child which the local authority has not been able to support with evidence.

25 Mr Rodwell, who had appeared on behalf of the local authority at all previous hearings, had prepared a document combining threshold and evidence as to risk to provide a framework for the court's decision making. Father has responded in some detail and Mother in slightly less detail.

26 An important matter of context arises from what the court was told at the first hearing about events on the day of H's birth in Southmead Hospital. In particular, the court was told that the baby was born withdrawing from drugs, that the mother had placed the child at risk by in some way ceasing to make an effort in labour and that both parents had made threats to kill the social worker. I requested a statement from the obstetric consultant. I received an email from the hospital trust's solicitor, which I have forwarded to the parties and which I intended to be included in the bundle, and which can be appended to this judgment. H was not withdrawing from drugs nor was there any information available to the consultant to suggest that that was a likelihood, labour was complicated by maternal exhaustion but it was not accurate to say that mother had stopped pushing on hearing of the baby's likely removal, and no witness who heard any threat to social worker has been identified although we have a statement from the Divisional Director of Nursing, who was present at the birth and when the police attended, we have the hospital notes and directions have been given which should have resulted in any statement made by a police officer being disclosed. In fact, it appeared that Father behaved entirely appropriately and supportively at Southmead and was permitted to remain in the hospital with the mother not just overnight but for three days.

27 I have reminded myself of the risk of being tempted to correct the injustice implicit in the information provided by the police about what took place at the hospital in forming any judgment. However, it remains unclear as to why the police agreed to intervene at the hospital at all when the case was known to social services and it would have been possible to have obtained an emergency protection order from the out of hours court.

28 It is highly unlikely that any judge would have granted an order that prevented H from having contact with his parents whilst on the maternity unit.

29 This fact finding hearing was set up five weeks ago when it became clear that the information in the local authority's analysis of risk was not all accurate and was presented in a highly coloured way. Directions had been given for evidence at every hearing, including explicit directions for the filing of disclosure by the police. It happens in some cases that police forces are unwilling to disclose information about a current investigation lest it in some way undermines that investigation, but what is necessary in this case is the information that was held about Father before H was born, none of which is likely to be sensitive in terms of further prosecution. I received a message from the local authority on 21.2.22 to say that the final police disclosure would not be available until 22.2.22 and therefore I was asked to adjourn this hearing, listed for two days on 23 and 24.2 22. I refused, on the basis that at the very least we needed to make use of the time that had been allocated. Some progress can usually be made when the advocates have had the opportunity of preparing for a hearing and are able to meet together in conference.

30 The disclosure which had been made available relates particularly to events on 12.9.21 when Father was arrested following some significant antisocial behaviour whilst drunk. He pleaded guilty to the offences charged and was sentenced on 3.2.22 to a term of 16 weeks imprisonment which has resulted in his appearing from custody and this hearing being scheduled to take place in Bristol Magistrates Court. There is the possibility of a home detention curfew on 3.3.22, i.e. after four weeks imprisonment, and a later release date of 30.3.22 (automatic half way release) otherwise. The outstanding disclosure, which was footage from body worn cameras and some text messages, was made available to the local authority on the morning of 22.2.22 but could not be viewed by the representatives before the hearing began because of the shortness of time and the format in which the material was made available. Father told the court that if it was to be watched, he would prefer not to see it again himself and that he is a changed person since those events took place, not least as a result of having spent time in custody.

31 On 22.2.22 I received a message to say that counsel who had previously been instructed to represent Father was unwell and could only be available remotely. I agreed that the hearing could be hybrid, and shortly afterwards I was told that he was too unwell even to conduct the case remotely. His solicitor has attended on his behalf, but I would not be able to impose on her at such short notice responsibility for conducting a contested fact finding hearing.

32 I have explained to the parties that my unwillingness to adjourn the case was not because I do not appreciate the difficulties faced by them but because it is essential in H's interests that progress is made in this case. No judge minds being relieved of a task: there is always work to do. However, adjourning a case does not give me a day off because the space is always filled by some of the work which has been over listed in other places: what it does is to require me to take time out of the diary which would otherwise be available to another case in order to list the adjourned hearing at some stage in the future. When a case is adjourned because material is not available, it is all too easy for the focus on preparing the case to slip further. No case should be adjourned without an alternative date being fixed and in this case, not unusually, the adjourned hearing should allow for continuity of representation as well as judicial continuity so that adjourning to an uncertain date or generally with a date to be fixed is always unsatisfactory. I do not want to dissuade parties from communicating frankly with the court about failures in the preparation of any case, rather to emphasise the Court's requirement that we all try to make use of time that has been allocated and to discourage thinking that an adjournment is the only appropriate response to a failure of preparation.

33 There was a third risk to the hearing: Mother did not attend today and had contacted her solicitor at about 6 AM this morning to say that she had been very unwell overnight and was not fit to travel. Mr Fuller was able to speak to her and confirm his instructions both as to her response to threshold and her position on the agreed document that was produced at the end of the day.

34 The Guardian, Sarah Lees, is on leave, which had been anticipated when the hearing was set, and therefore not able to provide instructions on proposals made on behalf of the child, but Miss MacLynn's position statement, following the advocates' meeting yesterday, advanced sensible proposals for a way forward: the parties were able to agree, in principle, that the time should be used to attempt to agree the relevant facts, circumventing the need for the Court to make decisions.

35 The assessment of risk to a newborn baby begins with an assessment of his parents' abilities. Both his parents were in the care of local authorities themselves. It is doubtful that either of them benefited much from that care, given the circumstances in which they each found themselves last year. The mother is 21 and the father 28. During mother's pregnancy their accommodation appeared to be insecure but the father was in work and both parents also had work after H was born. The local authority was alerted to possible concerns about the parents by Mother's mother very early in her pregnancy. There is no evidence so far about any support provided to her as a careleaver. There is no assessment of either parent's ability to care for H yet.

36 The parties were able at court today to agree facts which would support threshold findings and have been reduced to writing. There was discussion about the document described as "Analysis of risk and judgement" and the social worker, SW1, was able to agree that it should be amended in certain respects to reflect the scrutiny that has taken place of the evidence whilst retaining those parts which contain her professional opinion. I have approved the Agreed Schedule of Facts and made some observations in the hearing on the Analysis: it is not open to me before the hearing of evidence to form any judgement on the validity of the opinion expressed.

37 The parties hope that it will now be more likely that a mother and baby placement or a residential placement becomes available. It was recognised that the content of the "Analysis of risk and judgement" may have deterred some placements. It is important that any placement which becomes available is given careful consideration by the parents. I will be likely to approve any agreed directions that are submitted by email if any placement opportunity arises. No further directions were sought today and the case is listed for issues resolution hearing, now on 23 June 2022.

HHJ Cronin

23.2.22

AGREED SCHEDULE OF FACTS

_________________________________________________________

Substance Misuse

1. The father has consumed alcohol excessively, between the end of August 2021 and the end of November 2021, and tested positive for low level cocaine usage for August 2021.

2. The mother has consumed a low level of alcohol and a low level of cocaine during the period of August 2021 - November 2021, which was during pregnancy. The mother also accepts taking cocaine on the weekend of 4 February 2022 as a reaction to the father being sentenced to a term of imprisonment.

Convictions

3. The father has convictions dating between December 2006 and February 2022. His record shows he has been convicted on 11 occasions for a total of 33 offences. The offences consist of 9 offences against the person, 3 offences against property, 8 theft offences, 2 public disorder offences, 4 offences relating to police/courts/prisons, 3 drug offences, 2 offensive weapons, 2 miscellaneous offences.

4. The majority of the father's offending (23 offences) occurred between 2006 and 2013, when he was between the ages of 12 and 19.

5. There is a lapse in convictions until 2016, when he was convicted of battery, however there is no indication that this was related to a domestic incident. Other than drug driving, this was the father's last offence until his conviction in February 2022 for the offences on 12 September 2021, which were for assault by beating an emergency worker x5 and racially aggravated intentional harassment/alarm/distress.

6. The mother has no criminal convictions, but does have a caution for criminal damage in 18 June 2021, and for being drunk and disorderly on 21 November 2021.

Incidents between the parents

7. The relationship between the parents is volatile. There have been a number of referrals to the police, both from the parents and from others. There have been verbal arguments between them during which threats have been made. Both the mother and father do not accept that there has been physical violence. The mother does accept that there was one occasion on 14 April 2021 in which the father grabbed her. The father accepts on 14 April 2021 that he picked the mother up, whilst she was sitting down on a chair, but says this was to delete his credit card details from the mother's phone. He also accepts that on 21 November 2020 he barged the mother in an attempt to leave the house when he says she would not let him leave.

8. Excessive alcohol use by both parents has been a feature of domestic incidents between the parents at times.

9. In January 2021, both parents accept they were drinking and that they accidentally shot each other with an air rifle on this occasion causing injury.

10. To date, the father has worked positively with professionals and has worked well with the social worker and has maintained appropriate co-operation with professionals.

11. The father made undertakings to the court on 16 November 2021 which he has adhered to.

[1] Re C (child: interim separation) 2019 EWCA Civ 1998

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	England and Wales Family Court Decisions (other Judges)
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales Family Court Decisions (other Judges) >> Gloucestershire County Council v Mother & Ors [2022] EWFC 215 (B) (21 November 2022) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/OJ/2022/215.html Cite as: [2022] EWFC 215 (B)

England and Wales Family Court Decisions (other Judges)