Author Archives: Sarah Phillimore

Just what is the place of parents in the hierarchy of child protection?

When ‘knowing your rights’ equates to ‘sense of entitlement’ and what this says about child protection practices today.

It is a frequent complaint made to me that parents from poor backgrounds are targeted in care proceedings because they are poor. That the struggles they have in parenting are reflections of their alienation from more affluent society and that they need support for this – not condemnation.  There is very worrying evidence that rates of child protection intervention shoot up in the more deprived areas of the country which certainly demonstrates a link between poverty and increased likelihood that your child will be taken into care.

Can this really all be down to ‘bad’ rather than ‘sad’ parents? Are wealthier parents not exposing their children to any kind of harm worthy of state intervention? Or are they just better able to hide it or to avoid professional scrutiny?

So it was very interesting to read Professor Claudia Bernard’s research ‘An Exploration of How Social Workers Engage Neglectful Parents from Affluent Backgrounds in the Child Protection System’.

This research was commissioned by the City of London to find out what is known about child neglect in affluent families. There is little current research on this issue and Professor Bernard wanted to investigate what factors arise for social workers in responding to child neglect in  affluent families.

 

How is neglect defined?

Working Together to Safeguard Children (2015) definition of neglect is used:

“The persistent failure to meet a child’s basic physical and/or psychological needs, likely to result in the serious impairment of the child’s health and development” (DfE 2015).

‘Neglect’ is still the most common reason for child protection proceedings. Most investigations into ‘neglect’ focus on those families already known to the authorities and who are likely to be members of lower socio-economic groups. Issues of neglect in more affluent families is generally off the radar. A child who comes to school dirty and smelly is pretty easy to spot – but the child who lacks emotional attunement with a wealthy and largely absent parent is less immediately visible. Lack of immediately visible harm can flow from those parents who do not spend enough quality time with their children, pressure them to be high achievers and thus create psychological and emotional problems for the children in adulthood.

Such harm is recognised as an ‘ACE’ – an adverse childhood experience. As the study points out:

Adverse childhood experiences refer to physical and emotional abuse, sexual abuse and neglect, being exposed to domestic violence, substance abuse, and other early life stressors (Felitti et al. 1998). While many ACEs are disproportionately found in economically disadvantaged communities, it is important to note that research has identified that ACEs are far from absent in more affluent families (Bellis et al. 2014).

What did the research set out to do and what did it find?

The research posed three specific questions to participants from 12 different and diverse local authorities. The limitations of this work are recognised – it is small scale and exploratory and was not trying to elicit statistical or generalisable data.  

  • How do social workers identify risk factors for vulnerable children in affluent circumstances?
  • Which factors inhibit or enable social workers’ engagement with affluent parents when there are child protection concerns?
  • What kind of skills, knowledge and experience is necessary for frontline social workers to effectively assert their professional authority with affluent parents when there are concerns about abuse and neglect?

Key messages identified

  • The findings revealed that thresholds for neglect are not always understood, which posed challenges for effectively safeguarding children at risk of significant harm in privileged families.
  • The vast majority of the cases described by the participants concerned emotional neglect, although other forms of maltreatment, such as sexual abuse, child sexual exploitation and emotional abuse, were also identified.
  • Commonly-encountered cases involved struggling teenagers in private fee-paying and boarding schools,
  • Participants gave many examples to show how parents had the financial resources to access psychological support through private care providers to address their children’s emotional and behavioural problems; some practitioners viewed this as a positive outcome for the child, but some saw this as a way for the parents to opt out of the statutory child protection system, and to thus slip under the radar of children’s services.
  • Participants consistently cited that highly resistant parents were more likely to use legal advocates or the complaints procedures to challenge social workers.
  • All of the participants also experienced the challenges of inter- agency working with private fee-paying and boarding schools when child protection concerns were raised.
  • Considerable experience, practice wisdom and knowledge of neglect were essential in relation to working with highly resistant parents who had the resources to challenge social workers’ decision-making.
  • Skills, knowledge and competence: all of the participants highlighted the important role that supportive managers and good supervision played in helping them to effectively intervene in affluent families.

 

 

Conclusions and comments

One problem here is that the ‘vast majority’ of cases involving affluent parents involved ’emotional neglect’ – a phrase which almost every parent I have ever spoken to reacts to with baleful suspicion. Unsurprisingly, as the research noted: ‘Participants stressed that the vague and ambiguous nature of emotional neglect was one possible factor making it difficult to interpret and assess indicators of emotional neglect’.

But the much more troubling issue was the apparent assumption that parents’ knowledge of and willingness to act upon their legal rights was a Bad Thing.

The key question identified in the study is how to assess the psychological and emotional availability of parents and when and how the state should intervene, particularly as we are now embedded in a culture of ‘neoliberalism‘, where hierarchies are seen as based on competence and those who do not strive to achieve will fail and be left to fail.  How can we criticise parents for wanting their children to adapt and thrive in this environment?

I am sure many parents would be taken aback at the notion that their wish for their child to do well and their decision to push a child to achieve should be seen in the same category of the child who is not fed or clothed well enough, who has no toothbrush or no clean bed to sleep in. However, while relative affluence may mean it is easy for parents to avoid obvious physical signs of neglect – for example, by paying someone else to take care of their children’s physical needs – it does not mean that their children escape from emotional or psychological harm.

However, if we want parents to get on board with this we have to be able to explain it clearly and engage them to listen. What does the study tell us about this?

The comments I found most interesting were these:

All of the participants described difficulties in maintaining focus on the child because of the way that parents used their status and social capital to resist child protection intervention, and many also displayed a sense of entitlement to do as they pleased and that they know best.

One participant commented:

“Those children are quite hidden, because parents know their rights, they are articulate, and they can be quite avoiding. I would say that social workers are quite often concerned that working with affluent parents rather than with other parents because they are educated and they are very challenging”.

The report notes

in some cases, their obstruction towards social workers manifested in formal complaints to senior managers and elected councillors and the threat of legal action.

And

Participants elaborated the ways that the parents’ class backgrounds gave them an unspoken advantage, which meant that they were generally knowledgeable about the workings of organisations such as children’s social care and the safeguarding process; perhaps more crucially, their sense of entitlement, brought a greater confidence to challenge the child protection decision-making processes.

The point is that the vast majority of parents resist social work intervention when the allegations made about their parenting are serious and are made in a clumsy or belittling way by someone the parent does not know and trust. The vast majority of parents who contest these matters in court will say ‘they know best’ – so, of course they will ‘do as they pleased’ – a revealingly pejorative way of referring to parents acting on what they think is the right thing for their child.

The use of phrase ‘know their rights’ as if this was somehow a criticism – ‘a sense of entitlement’ –  was a chilling echo to my earlier conversations with social workers about the law merely being ‘an aspect’ of what they do and Louise Tickle’s examination of long standing and extremely serious failings on the part of social workers to understand their legal obligations behind the use of section 20 accommodation.  Not all formal complaints are made to ‘obstruct social workers’. I often advise clients to make formal complaints about some piece of bad practice – but of course to parents in the middle of proceedings, how many of them have the time and space to do this? They tell me they are worried what will happen to them if they are seen to complain – it looks like they have a point.

Parents resist intervention because they deliberately wish to evade detection to carry on abusing their children (a small minority) or – much more likely – because they lack the skills or insight to accept that they are in fact doing harm to their children. it is easier to resist intervention or criticism than accept that you might be doing something to hurt the person you love very much.

Rich parents use status and social capital to dodge intervention; poor parents use other blunter techniques. But the common thread to all successful interventions with families must be social workers with the time, space and skill to build relationships of trust. And I am not sure that this time or space exists anymore. Its useful to focus on a group who may be escaping necessary intervention and to ask some questions why – but not if that takes away proper consideration of how the fundamentals of social work are being neglected and degraded.

Its not about money. Its about trust, its about relationships, its about working together. I am not sure how helpful it is to set up another group of parents to potentially demonise for their horrid neglectful ways .

When asked what helped, participants replied:

Participants cite the organisational cultures of support, purposeful informal conversations about the case with colleagues, good supervision, knowledge and confidence and responsive managers, themed learning activities, as key to their ability to work in this complex field.

It is both sad and revealing that ‘building relationships of trust with the parents we work with’ did not feature in that list.

It is high time we grappled with the increasing push in social work to see the child in isolation from family and community and that any indignity heaped on a family can be justified on the basis that the social worker is ‘there for the child’.  Issues of neglect and abuse which do not involve immediate and substantial harm – the broken bone, the sexual assault – are always going to be tricky to identify, define and deal with in the right way at the right time. The key to all of this will be working together.

I leave you with one final comment from the research

For example, some participants spoke of being belittled and humiliated by parents in meetings, leaving them feeling as if they had to prove themselves and establish their credibility

This is what parents tell me they feel in care proceedings. Time and time again. This is what happens when you set each other up in opposition. When the culture is one of blame and shame. It cuts both ways – and it hurts everyone.

Further reading

Communicating with the Home Office in family proceedings.

COMMUNICATING WITH UK VISAS AND IMMIGRATION (UKVI)
IN FAMILY PROCEEDINGS

Protocol agreed between the President of the Family Division and the Home Office issued on 16 May 2018

1 This Protocol enables the family courts (the Family Division of the High Court of Justice and the Family Court) to communicate with UK VISAS AND IMMIGRATION (UKVI), the relevant division of the Home Office, to obtain immigration and visa information for use in family court proceedings. Although it replaces and supersedes the previous guidance issued in 2002, 2004, 2006, 2010 and 2014, in particular to reflect new UKVI processes and contact details, it does not alter the nature or purpose of the Protocol.

2 There are three parts of the process:

(1) HMCTS form EX660 (rev 04/18), a copy of which is annexed to this Protocol, must be completed by the parties and approved by the judge.

(a) The EX660 must be typed, not handwritten.
(b) The EX660 must be completed in full, specifying the details of the relevant family members and their relationship to the child(ren). Details of both mother and father/adoptive parents if known should be provided, whether or not they are involved in the proceedings, as this enables UKVI to trace the child(ren)’s records.
(c) The EX660 and the order must specify the questions the court wishes to be answered by UKVI.
(d) The EX660 must contain the name and contact details of someone who has agreed and is able to provide further information if needed.
(e) The EX660 must clearly state the time by which the information is required.

Failure to do this may cause delay in the time it takes UKVI to process the request.

(2) An order in the relevant form, a copy of which is annexed to this Protocol, must be drawn up, approved by the judge and sealed by the court.

(a) The order must clearly state the time by which the information is required.
(b) The order must specify any additional information or documents, such as a synopsis, which it wishes UKVI to have and set out in the order that the leave of the court to make disclosure to UKVI has been given. (Note that it may be a contempt of court to disclose this information otherwise.)

(3) The UKVI SVEC pro-forma must be completed by the court staff utilising the information in the EX660 and the order.

(a) All relevant fields in the SVEC pro-forma must be completed:
i. Section A – All fields to be completed if known
ii. Section B – Enquiry Type – Select Standard
iii. Section C – Select Subject 1 and complete all fields.
iv. Section D – Enter “Y” in “Other ” field only.
v. Section E – Enter ” Please refer to court order and EX660″.
vi. For more than one subject, select subject 2 and so on, completing steps C-E for each one.
(b) In Section B there are two fields, “Court date” and “required date”, which must be completed. In both fields the date the information is required should be entered, not the court date. These fields generate the target date on UKVI systems and, as the information ordered by the court will be required before the date of the court hearing, this will ensure that the information is provided in time.

3 The EX660 and the order must contain sufficient information to enable UKVI to understand the nature of the case, to identify whether the case involves an adoption, and to identify whether the immigration issues raised relate to an asylum or a non- asylum application.
4 In order to comply with the agreed four (4) week period for UKVI to provide a response to the court, the sealed order should be available to be sent by the court staff to UKVI on the same day that the order is made. Where that is not possible, the court, when stating the required date of receipt by the court of the information requested, must allow any additional time necessary for the preparation, sealing and sending of the order. This is to ensure that UKVI has four (4) weeks to provide a response from the time it receives the order.
5 The sealed order, completed EX660 and SVEC pro-forma should be sent immediately by the court to IC**************@****************ov.uk including EEREQUEST on the subject line of the email. The request for information will be rejected by UKVI if either the sealed order or the SVEC pro-forma is not provided.
6 Where the court wishes to progress a case that may be delayed, it may send an email to SV************@****************ov.uk
7 The UKVI official will be personally responsible for either:
(i) answering the query themselves, by retrieving the file and preparing a statement for the court; or
(ii) forwarding to a caseworker or relevant official with carriage of the particular file.
8 UKVI will ensure that their information is received by the court in time, as instructed by the judge or court making the request.

James Munby, President of the Family Division

Bristol Family Law Scheme – reflections on the needs of litigants in person

The Bristol Family Law Scheme was established in 2015. It is made up of volunteers from local solicitors firms and chambers; there are about 30 volunteers on the current rota. Administrative support is provided by the PSU at the Bristol Civil Justice Centre. The scheme used to run weekly but now runs fortnightly due to pressure on the volunteers. There are 7 slots available from 10am – 4pm for 30 minutes each.

The scheme is directed at private law proceedings only – i.e disputes between parents about how they spend time with their children post separation.

Each volunteer was asked to complete a form detailing the type of issues raised by each client.

I have been able to analyse the forms for 57 sessions between 5th November 2015 and 28th September 2017, involving 246 people, thus averaging about 4 per session.

What follows can only be a rough and ready statistical analysis – clearly volunteers did not complete forms for each session and there are indications that it wasn’t always easy to identify a category of presenting issue. But this gives a rough idea of what are the pressing matters for those who seek to use the scheme.

English as a second language 65 26%
Likely to be in person 199 80%
Mental health problems 36 14%
Substance abuse 39 16%
Learning difficulties or literacy problems 31 13%
Immigration difficulties 13 5%
Child abduction 14 5%
Violence or sexual abuse of adult or child 130 53%
Previous proceedings 91 37%
Leave to remove 17 7%
Current criminal proceedings 10 4%
Reference to other agencies 42 17%

 

Some comments on the statistics

Unsurprisingly 80% of those attending were likely to be self representing at any future hearings. What leaps out is that a quarter of all clients did not have English as their main language and over half were describing issues of physical or sexual violence directed at either adults or children in their proceedings.

Interestingly 37% of the clients had been involved in previous proceedings which supports my view that the court is not likely to be the best arena to resolve adult difficulties around child arrangement orders.

On average, only 4 out of the 7 slots were filled at each session. This appears primarily due to clients who book a session but simply don’t attend and the reasons for that are not known.

It appears clear that the scheme meets a need for local people who are unrepresented in family proceedings. Whether or not such short advice sessions can make much realistic positive long term impact in proceedings involving such serious issues is another question and one beyond my attempts here at statistical analysis.

Family Court Information website

Every client is provided with a letter providing the address of the Family Court information website

Web site statistics show from 10 months between July 2017 and April 2018 104,890 users and 138,125 sessions. Interestingly only 2.3% of those users (2,585) were accessing the site from Bristol – a staggering 27% (29,934) were accessing the site from London. People in every major city were accessing the site and the bounce rate was a reasonable 69% – i.e. people weren’t simply leaving the site after visiting one page.

This suggests that there is considerable appetite country wide for this kind of information and a need for each local court centre to have its own online source of information.

Innovations in Children’s Social Care – to what extent are parents and children included?

This is a post by a parent. NESTA is an ‘innovation foundation’ backing new ideas to tackle ‘the big challenges of our time’. The What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care is a new project to foster evidence-informed practice in the sector in England. The Development Team is helping to identify what the Centre should focus on, how it should identify and share evidence, and how it should be managed and led.

She poses the stark question – are children and families going to be direct participants in this endeavour or is it more an effort to find cheaper innovations with no clear definition of what is meant by ‘success’? I would be interested to know what response this parent receives…

 

WHAT WORKS CENTRE
OPEN LETTER to NESTA

​Dear Sir/Madam

I’m the parent of a young person who entered Care in adolescence. I’ve been campaigning and working for better rights for families in similar circumstances and for children with disabilities who enter Care since then.

I understand that NESTA will have a key role in the new What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care

As I understand it, there are a number of ethical issues that need to be addressed as regards the aims of the Centre and how these should be achieved. The Children’s Act 1989, is the primary piece of legislation to protect the welfare of children and it is generally accepted that it was intended to promote collaborative working between families and Agencies in the best interests of children.

The Main Principles of the Act are:
– the welfare of the child is the paramount consideration.
– wherever possible, children should be brought up and cared for within their own families.
– parents with children in need should be helped to bring up their children themselves; this help would be provided as a service to the child and his family.

It seems apparent that we are at a crossroads as regards working with families in England and Wales with some stark choices:-
​ Are the principles of the Children’s Act to be bravely embraced as never before including involving parents and carers in real decision-making at strategic level when it comes to designing social care services for children and families?
Or
Are children and families to be treated as ‘guinea pigs’ in developing commercially viable ‘interventions’ in the name of ‘innovative practice in child protection’ with little say in the matter and no clear idea of how success is defined relative to the Children’s Act 1989?

I have been in a considerable number of rooms containing child protection professionals with a ‘we know best’ attitude when it comes to working with families and I find this both dispiriting and disturbing. What I’m sure of is that this attitude will never deliver for children and families. Not all programmes are like this thankfully. I’m a parent/carer member of a NHS Programme for example which has an ethos of co-production.

Please, please involve families (birth, adoptive, kinship etc) in the new Centre at decision-making level. To do anything other than this is highly unethical and will undermine the stated aims of the Centre.

This is my submission to the Care Crisis Review for what it is worth.
https://childprotectionautisticchild.weebly.com/respect.html

I look forward to a response to this email.

Yours Sincerely
 

Are you sitting comfortably? The Art of Story Telling

As a species we appear to be primed to impose a narrative on our experiences. We love stories and we need them. As Adam Gopnik commented in 2012, looking at the science behind storytelling:

Gottschall’s encouraging thesis is that human beings are natural storytellers—that they can’t help telling stories, and that they turn things that aren’t really stories into stories because they like narratives so much. Everything—faith, science, love—needs a story for people to find it plausible. No story, no sale.

The book ‘The Seven Basic Plots: Why we tell stories’ is described thus:

This remarkable and monumental book at last provides a comprehensive answer to the age-old riddle of whether there are only a small number of ‘basic stories’ in the world. Using a wealth of examples, from ancient myths and folk tales via the plays and novels of great literature to the popular movies and TV soap operas of today, it shows that there are seven archetypal themes which recur throughout every kind of storytelling.

It is of course a bitter irony that its author is Christopher Booker, one of the chief proponents over many years of the narrative of the ‘evil and secret’ family courts that do untold harm to ‘innocent’ families for no reason other than caprice and cruelty. See this post for how he wrote about the case of Marie Black, a convicted paedophile in the criminal courts but to Booker simply another in a long line of victims of the family courts.

So I can conclude that stories are important to our psychological make up as a species and that there are only a limited number of ‘basic stories’ . I can also conclude that the family justice system has not been able to grapple with this narrative drive for some very obvious reasons. Predominantly this is the operation of section 12 of the Administration of Justice Act which prohibits publication of details of proceedings held in private – as most proceedings under the Children Act are.

This insistence on privacy is to protect the identity of the children involved becoming widely known – a perfectly proper endeavour. Children did not ask to be born and they certainly did not ask to become involved in public airing of the family’s dirty secrets.

But this has lead to silence from those who know best about how cases are argued, how judges make decisions, why and how families are separated and children adopted. Into that silence, over the years, has come the noise and chatter of many groups and individuals who for a variety of reasons have a strong and appealing narrative about the family justice system. Many of these narratives bear no resemblance to reality but to counter them is next to impossible because of course responsible commentators cannot refer to the details of actual court proceedings involving children.

This has all come to a head recently with the death of Alfie Evans on 28th April 2018. The ‘compassionate’ judgments in this case have been published. But how many are reading them?

https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/991621229391044608

 

Its always interesting to apply a Dunning Fog index test to published text.This is

a weighted average of the number of words per sentence, and the number of long words per word. An interpretation is that the text can be understood by someone who left full-time education at a later age than the index.

To be ‘universally accessible’ the text needs to score no more than 8. To be ‘widely accessible’ no more than 12. Looking at the first judgment in Alfie Evan’s case in February 2018, a random paragraph scores 18.61. The Church Militant article, pictured above, scored 13.29 and of course was accompanied by heart wrending photographs of a little boy and a far more instantly accessible and emotional narrative than that provided by the court judgments.

Many lawyers commented on social media that they could not understand why so many appeared to be by-passing the compassion and legal wisdom of the published judgments and preferring instead to share the more lurid and fantastical stories playing out around Alfie’s life and death. Perhaps this discussion may give them a clue.

Why does this matter? The difference between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ transparency

It matters because those who peddle the strong but wrong narratives have a reach and influence far beyond comments on a screen. No sadder and clearer example can be found than in the Alfie Evans case where hundreds of people marched on a children’s hospital to shout abuse at doctors and nurses. The comments of the Court of Appeal in the final court judgment in April 2018 make for troubling reading:

  1. We were reminded that in the past leading counsel, Mr Stephen Knafler QC, acting then on behalf of both of the parents, deprecated the involvement of legally qualified but not practising lawyers who introduced (to use Mr Knafler’s phrase) a “darker side” to what was otherwise valuable support. It has become apparent to this court, and we referred to it in the postscript to the judgment that we gave on 6 March 2018 in relation to the first appeal, that there was some coordinated organisation of potential medical experts in relation to more than one of these vulnerable families, the same expert being covertly introduced to Kings College Hospital to examine secretly one child in the paediatric intensive care unit there and the next day to go to Alder Hey, again covertly and secretly, to purport to examine Alfie there.

  2. It is not the function of this court now to embark upon an investigation of these matters, but it has become apparent, in particular in terms of the information we have been given about the instruction of the new legal team for the mother today and the drafting of the grounds of appeal upon which Mr Coppel purported to rely at the start of his submissions, (with its unhappy emphasis on prospective criminal proceedings against the staff at Alder Hey) that the representation of the parents may have been infiltrated or compromised by others who purport to act on their behalf. I say no more, but I have in mind the tenuous nature of the direct contact that Mr Coppel and his instructing solicitors had with the mother and yet the clear grounds of appeal that he was instructed to put forward on her behalf, which were, it now transpires, drafted by a lawyer who is not before the court. It may be that some investigation of whether, in this country, at this time, parents who find themselves in these awful circumstances, and are therefore desperate for help and vulnerable to engaging with people whose interests may not in fact assist the parents’ case, needs some wider investigation, but I do no more than draw attention to the concern that this court has at what seems to be an unhelpful development which may, in reality, be contrary to the interests of such parents.

There are many other examples of this kind of attack on the rule of law and the erosion of public trust and confidence in the family justice system. The same names crop up over and over again – Sabine McNeil, John Hemming, Ian Josephs and Christopher Booker for example. They all promote the narrative that parents would be better off leaving the jurisdiction than facing the UK family court system. Josephs and Hemming provide money and accommodation for mothers they persuade to ‘flee’. For many, this proves a disastrous decision.

Sabine McNeil was one of those ‘campaigners’ responsible for promoting the ‘Hampstead Hoax’ which even now continues to cause anxiety to local parents who find themselves branded satanic abusers. The judgment in the fact finding hearing sets out the truth but that judgment can make no inroads into the deluded certainties of those who are convinced that a primary school in Hampstead routinely organised the murder of babies and the wearing of their skin as shoes.

Although Sabine McNeil is now in prison, it is sobering to remember that only in 2014 she was presenting a petition to the European Parliament about the UK family courts, which lead to a visit to London by a European delegation in November of that year.

Also in 2014 the President of the Family Division Sir James Munby made it clear that things had to change, saying:

I am determined to take steps to improve access to and reporting of family proceedings. I am determined that the new Family Court should not be saddled, as the family courts are at present, with the charge that we are a system of secret and unaccountable justice.’

The President issued guidelines for the publication of judgments and the last four years have seen a significant increase in the number published – however, there appears no clear or coherent strategy behind this. Some judges publish a lot, some none at all. Publishing a judgment, as I have commented, doesn’t mean that anyone will read it or that it can stand up to a much more immediate and ‘sexy’ narrative.

So what’s the solution?

Family lawyers and the family justice system need to understand the difference between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ transparency and need to be more willing to promote the first. ‘Transparency’ is about so much more than just allowing passive public scrutiny of processes and outcomes: we must generate a far greater understanding amongst the public about what is behind the decisions made. This becomes an increasingly urgent project as distrust between parents and professionals apparently hardens and increases. For example, in 2017 McFarlane LJ noted with disquiet in the first Bridget Lindley Memorial Lecture:

‘From what I have been told from a range of sources, and from my own exposure on a daily basis to litigants in person seeking to appeal child care decisions, there is a significant and growing distrust shown by some parents in child care lawyers and judges. This is deeply worrying and needs to be addressed if it is not to lead to yet more parents disengaging from working with professionals and the process in a way which can, in my view, only damage their interests rather than enhance them.’

This worrying evidence of growing distrust between parents and professionals was also highlighted by the journalist and Transparency Project member Louise Tickle who delivered the second BLM lecture on March 13th in Birmingham. Louise is an example of the benefits of a particular type of ‘active’ transparency – encouraging intelligent outsiders to examine our current closed systems and highlight where practice and procedure that to family lawyers seems normal, may appear bizarre and even frightening to those on the outside. Her clear conclusion was that the secrecy of the family courts was a disgrace and led to bad practice escaping scrutiny and censure. When writing about family cases her inbox became ‘one long scream of pain’.

Little wonder then that the narratives about the ‘evil secret family courts’ take such firm grasp and no doubt at all about the damage they do – not just to individuals who find themselves taking some very bad advice, but to society as a whole, for respect for the rule of law.

All of us involved in the family justice system have to start getting better at telling our story.

https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/991627404891377664

 

Further Reading

 

  • Note in particular this article Science vs Conspiracy: Collective Narratives in the Age of Misinformation: ‘the World Wide Web has changed the dynamics of information transmission as well as the agenda-setting process [1]. Relevance of facts, in particular when related to social relevant issues, mingle with half-truths and untruths to create informational blends [2, 3]. In such a scenario, as pointed out by [4], individuals can be uninformed or misinformed and the role of corrections in the diffusion and formation of biased beliefs are not effective. In particular, in [5] online debunking campaigns have been shown to create a reinforcement effect in usual consumers of conspiracy stories.’

 

Keep on Running Part II

On 12th April 2018 Mr Justice Francis gave judgment in the case of CFA (Ireland) v F [2018] EWHC 939 (Fam) (12 April 2018).

This is a case about parents ‘fleeing’ from the UK to Ireland in an attempt to avoid child protection proceedings here. I have written before about this phenomenon and the dangers it can pose to parents and children. See  ‘Helping Parents leave the Jurisdiction’ first published in September 2015 and ‘Mums on the Run’ first published in September 2016.

This current is case is another illustration of the futility of this strategy.

I would be interested to know who helped the parents in this case leave the jurisdiction and what interest or investigation – if any – they made into what is described as the ‘extremely complicated’ background of the mother.

If previous cases are any guide, they made none because they don’t see this as relevant – the only goal is to get parents out of the ‘clutches’ of the evil child snatchers. It seems that the issue of ‘mums on the run’ is gaining increasing prominence. The influence of certain individuals such as John Hemming and Ian Josephs in the continued encouragement of this often futile endeavour, needs to be taken much more seriously by all those charged with securing the welfare of children.

Josephs is quite clear that he gives money to parents without any check or even concern about what challenges and traumas they have faced which might impact on their ability to provide safe care for a child. The most notorious example of this is of course Marie Black – a convicted paedophile who Josephs helped travel to France before her trial and conviction.

I have commented over the years that it is going to take a child to die before anyone takes this seriously. I really hope I am wrong about that.

 

Facts of this case and the court’s decision

CFA involved a child F, who was born in late 2017 and at the time of the court hearings was living in foster care in Ireland. Her parents had travelled from the UK to Ireland when the mother was pregnant with F and another sibling was in the care of an English local authority. The issue was now which country should decide where F should live as she was growing up.

Article 15 of the Brussels II regulations sets out the procedure the courts need to follow when transferring these cases.

Article 15(1) provides:

“By way of exception, the courts of a Member State having jurisdiction as to the substance of the matter may, if they consider that a court of another Member State, with which the child has a particular connection, would be better placed to hear the case, or a specific part thereof, and where this is in the best interests of the child:

The matter had first come before Judge O’Leary in Ireland on 8 January 2018 and she granted the Article 15 request to transfer. The parents appealed and it came before HHJ Donnabháin on 6 February 2018 who confirmed that earlier decision. The matter then came before the English courts. In February 2018 MacDonald J agreed with the Irish courts.

MacDonald J allowed the mother and father the chance to argue about why this shouldn’t happen and the parents put their arguments in writing and appeared before Francis J. After some confusion about whether the parents were physically in Ireland and attempting to challenge decisions made there, the hearing got underway but required considerably more time than the hour which it had optimistically been allowed.

Francis J was clear that factual background of the parents ‘fleeing’ was not relevant to the decision he was now making and he didn’t hold it against the parents ‘as a black mark’. He recognised that the Irish judgments contained some very important information and he cited it at some length. He found that the Irish courts had give very clear reasons as to why F’s case should be transferred.

HHJ Donnabháin had found that F has ‘a UK nationality and identity.’ Further, the mother’s circumstances also raised concern. At para 5 he said:

This lady’s background [by which he means the mother] is extremely complicated and requires the fullest access to all the medical, psychiatric, and social work reports which exist. These reports can only be ultimately relied upon to be produced in the United Kingdom and they are of fundamental importance to informing any court decision regarding the child’s welfare.”

And at para 13 he said:

I should say that it is obvious to me from the background that I have read about this case that the mother is entitled to the court’s greatest sympathy and understanding for she has had, it is undoubtedly true, an extremely difficult, troubled, and traumatic time. I need say no more about that for the purposes of this judgment but it is important to her that she knows that it is acknowledged by me when giving this judgment.

Francis J reminded himself of the observations of the President of the Family Division in Re HJ (A Child) [2013] EWHC 1867 (Fam) which commented that transfer requests were effectively a ‘summary process’ – to go into the merits of the case in any great detail would risk protracted and costly battles as to which is the correct jurisdiction. So the transfer decision must be made swiftly and what really matters in this case is the decision that will be made in due course by the court deciding where F should live as she grows up.

The proposed transfer must be in the best interests of the child and Francis J found that the  Irish courts had already made that assessment and found the transfer would be positively beneficial.

The parents’ arguments against transfer

The parents argued they are settled in Ireland and want to be assessed there. However the Judge responded that transferring the case to England would not prevent the parents being assessed in what they say is now their home country and he did not see this as a determinative feature.

Of more importance was their argument that if F came to England that would make it more difficult for them to see her. However, the Judge commented that there was nothing to stop the local authority, if they obtained an interim care order for F, to allow her to stay in the interim care of her current foster carers in Ireland: ‘There is nothing particularly unusual about that. Indeed, Schedule 2 of the Children Act 1989 specifically provides for such placement’.

F’s guardian in Ireland made it clear shat F should not be moved in the interim and Francis J agreed.

…I am not saying that it would mean that there could not ever be a change of interim care, but it seems to me that a change of interim care is almost always to be avoided in these cases if the interim care is satisfactory. As far as I can see here, it is not just satisfactory but extremely good interim care that F is currently enjoying. However, there is no reason for me to think that the acceptance of a transfer request would alter the possibility of F continuing to be with her Irish foster carers.

The Judge however rejected the parents’ arguments that it would be contrary to F’s best interests to endure a short journey from Ireland to England and further comments that if F did end up living in England then the parents could be helped to travel to see her, at least in the short term.

 

He concluded at para 33:

I am completely satisfied that it is in F’s best interests for this case to be transferred to England. Moreover, the principles of comity require that I should have very considerable respect and regard for the Irish order, which I do, albeit that I am of course not bound to accept the request. However, having applied, I hope properly, the test which is set out in Article 15(5) and its interpretation by recent case law, I am completely satisfied that this court should accept the request and I now do so.

Further Reading

A case in August 2018 where an Advocate General of the European Court of Justice was highly critical of the actions of both the English and Irish authorities, who organised the removal of children from Ireland without the parents knowledge and without them having sight of the English LA’s application to enforce orders for removal.  See this post from The Transparency Project. 

The Irish courts  have also commented critically, as reported by the Irish Examiner:

Irish social workers must “stop immediately” the practice of acting in conjunction with their UK counterparts in seeking the return to Britain of children at the centre of care proceedings without the parents’ knowledge of that application, the Court of Appeal has said.

If it does not stop, social workers could face contempt of court proceedings, Mr Justice Gerard Hogan said. He also expressed the “deepest misgivings” about the conduct of Irish and English social workers in one such case.

However In Lincolnshire County Council v J.MCA & anor [2018] IEHC 514 (25 September 2018) the Irish court ordered the return to England of a child removed by her parents after the making of interim care orders; following mistaken advice from a McKenzie Friend in England that the father’s ‘parental rights’ permitted them to do this.

Part of the parents’ arguments against return was that their English lawyers had not ‘fought’ for them and the English courts had made the wrong decisions. The Irish court pointed out that the decisions so far of the English courts were interim decisions only. They said this about the parents’ challenge to the English court system at para 39 of the judgment:

…the respondents have in substance made an allegation that the English courts are unwilling to protect their rights or those of the child. This allegation has been made without any supporting expert evidence or any affidavit from the lawyers who represented the respondents in the English courts or any evidence other than the opinion of the respondents. I have no hesitation in rejecting the submission. The respondents were afforded legal representation before the English court; appropriate hearings were conducted; a doctor gave evidence and was cross-examined; future hearings were being planned; this was all done in a similar fashion to how adversarial proceedings are carried out in Ireland. Further, the interim arrangement was in my view a humane one, involving the child being placed with her grandmother and the respondents being permitted three access visits per week. There is no evidence at all to suggest that the English courts are unwilling to protect the child’s rights or those of the respondents. In reality all that is offered is the respondents’ personal view that the doctors and the court were wrong in their diagnosis and that they were being treated unfairly by the courts. They could have advanced their case vigorously if they had stayed for the full hearing; and it can be done on their behalf at any future hearing, with appropriate evidence …

 

‘Consent’ and its importance

I am grateful for this post written by a parent about the practical and emotions impacts on parents around the issue of consent. This is particularly relevant in the context of much of the concern arising over use of section 20 accommodation under the Children Act 1989. For more detailed discussion about the impact of section 20, see this post.  

noun

permission for something to happen or agreement to do something.

“no change may be made without the consent of all the partners”

synonyms: agreement, assent, concurrence, accord; More

verb

give permission for something to happen.

“he consented to a search by a detective”

synonyms: agree to, assent to, allow, give permission for, sanction, accept, approve, acquiesce in, go along with, accede to, concede to, yield to, give in to, submit to, comply with, abide by, concur with, conform to

“all the patients consented to surgery”

 

Pretty clear isn’t it, yet speaking as one of any number of parents who have been duped by having their children removed under S20 , the term consent does not seem that easy to understand by all social workers.
This  short post is not about the legal implications, I am not a lawyer, but the practical and emotional effect on parents by dispensing with their consent. Consent is important , it is normally needed when someone or something could invade your privacy or potentially cause you harm. For instance we all have to consent to cookies on various website’s which store our browsing history, more seriously all sex must be between consenting adults if not it is a crime. Having you child removed from you without your consent is a violation, it feels as emotionally harmful as rape and that is no exaggeration. You are completely powerless, nobody will listen and you are as frightened as hell. You don’t know were to turn  and you believe the social worker because they sound knowledgeable. It is the power imbalance at its worst.
If you then find out your child has been removed unlawfully, you ricochet into the grief cycle starting with anger, which plays straight into the hands of the local authority who will deem you as mentally unstable and /or non compliant. You will feel guilt for not knowing that what happened was wrong and that you have let your children down. Closely followed by shame that you were taken in. Night terrors , can become the norm from the resulting PTSD.
Practically , parents are encouraged to break the law with regard to the benefits system . I remember asking whether I should still receive child benefit and was told to do so. Yet if a child lives elsewhere for more than 8 weeks the parent is supposed to stop claiming https://www.gov.uk/child-benefit-child-lives-with-someone-else .
Many parents actually then up in debt , on top of their other problems whilst they are having to downsize. They may be unlawfully placed on supervised contact, so on top of their grief, their life has to revolve around getting to contact. Jobs and other commitments  are disrupted leading to added strain.  Local Authorities may pay out of pocket expenses for travel to contact , but these are normally  a  minimum and paid late.  Plus most parents will have no say as contact is  gradually whittled down. Contact may very well be supervised despite being unlawful. All of this is likely to have occurred without the benefit of legal advice.
Could you imagine going for an operation without the possible implications explained to you or even buy a car on a loan and you signing to say you understood. Consent matters, especially in removal of something more precious to you than anything in the world. Lack of consent leaves open wounds for years after, I know mine are still festering, that’s why I had to write this post. I hope it helps to stop the coercion of parents happening.

Financial remedies if mistakes are made in proceedings involving children

This is the text of a seminar delivered at St Johns Chambers in Bristol on March 21st 2018

Financial Remedies in Children Proceedings

1. What we will examine this evening are possible routes down which might enable you to get a financial remedy for a child who has suffered harm or loss. A typical example is a child who has been through care proceedings which have not been conducted well, or has been left drifting in section 20 accommodation without the local authority making any application to the court. There is evidence that the child has been harmed by this, possibly left traumatised and needing further therapeutic support, which a local authority may be reluctant to pay for. What are the options in such cases?
2. I will look at three possible avenues – the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, actions in negligence and actions under the Human Rights Act 1998. Spoiler alert – I am going to conclude that when comparing negligence and the HRA it is the latter that is likely to be the remedy of choice. Asha will then take you through the ‘nuts and bolts’ of making such an application as the courts have now clarified the strict procedural requirements and the likely impact for the legally aided that the LAA will attempt to claw back costs.

General points

3. The law in these areas can be complicated. It is not difficult to understand why as they invariably involve payment of money. The only compensation possible in many cases is money – years of childhood cannot be restored.
4. Getting financial compensation may have to involve bringing legal action against people or agencies who did not directly cause the harm, because they have ‘deeper pockets’ i.e. greater access to money via department budgets or insurance schemes. Insurance companies are usually very keen to avoid paying out. Thus such cases are often fought very hard.
5. This has proved a particularly fraught arena when dealing with harm done to children or families by the actions or failure to act of a local authority. Harm is most likely to be caused by individuals such as social workers or foster carers who are unlikely to be rich enough to be worth suing as individuals. The focus then falls on the local authority and to what standards they could reasonably be held. But when local authorities are under a statutory duty to try and protect children, there are significant public policy arguments against imposing financial liabilities owing to fears that this may lead to defensive practices and unwillingness to work with families. It is also often difficult to establish causation when many different agencies and people contribute to decision making.

Criminal Injuries Compensation Board

6. The CICB deals with compensation claims from people who have been physically or mentally injured because they were the victim of a violent crime in England, Scotland or Wales. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme 2012 sets out the critieria for eligibility and compensation rates. Annex B to the scheme confirms that a crime of violence includes a sexual assault. I won’t go into detail here but will just remind you of paragraph 9 (which I had overlooked):
A person may be eligible for an award under this Scheme whether or not the incident giving rise to the criminal injury to which their application relates has resulted in the conviction of an assailant in any part of the United Kingdom or elsewhere.

Negligence

7. In essence, to establish negligence you need to show that you were owed a ‘duty of care’ which was breached. In many cases the courts have refused to find that such a duty of care existed, relying on public policy grounds. However, those who argue against the refusal to extend liability point out that negligence is more than just ‘carelessness’ – it has to be behaviour that falls far below what you would expect from others in this field. Why shouldn’t children and families be protected from such serious failings?
8. The common law around negligence is continually evolving, reflecting the constant shifts in societal attitudes towards notions of vulnerability and harm. For example, we can see the clear evolution of the court’s willingness to find local authorities liable for harm caused to children by abusive foster carers. As recently as 2015 the Court of Appeal decided a local authority could not be held ‘vicariously liable’ for the actions of its foster carers; however, the decision was over-turned in part when the case reached the Supreme Court in Armes v Nottinghamshire County Council [2017] which decided that whilst there was not a non-delegable duty to take reasonable care, it was possible for such vicarious liability to exist.
9. I stress at the outset that negligence is a complicated area of law and I do not claim particular expertise. Anyone contemplating an action in negligence will need to get proper advice from a specialist practitioner. But I hope what follows can be a useful overview of some of the likely considerations, to at least help you decide if you do need to take that next step.

CN v Poole Borough Council

10. An interesting recent case that provides a framework for this discussion was the decision by the Court of Appeal on December 21st 2017; CN v Poole Borough Council [2017] EWCA civ 2185. This was reported at the time as a decision that prevented victims of abuse claiming compensation from local authorities, including victims of such scandals as Rotherham – see for example reports in The Times and the Daily Mirror on the 1st January 2018.

Facts of this case

11. A mother ‘Mrs N’ had two sons, CN (aged 9) and GN (aged 7). CN had serious disabilities, requiring a high level of care and supervision. In May 2006, the family moved into accommodation on a housing estate in Poole. The local authority arranged this as the local housing authority and the accommodation was rented from the Poole Housing Partnership Limited (“PHP”). Sadly, over the next few years, Mrs N and her sons were the victims of serious anti social behaviour from a neighbouring family. Mrs N reported this to various agencies – the police, the local authority and the PHP. She had to complain further to local politicians about the lack of effective response from these agencies. This led to the Home Office being involved who carried out an independent case review in 2010 that criticised the agencies’ responses. However, the anti social behaviour continued and the family were finally re-housed in December 2011.

Litigation from 2012

12. Litigation then commenced. In December 2012 the family claimed against the council, the police and the PHP alleging breach of the Human Rights Act 1998 and negligence. The essence of the claim was that all three agencies had failed to take appropriate steps to protect the family from abuse and this was a breach of their rights under Articles 3 and 8 of the ECHR. However, the family did not provide particular details of their claim, they asked more time to provide these details in August 2013, but in December 2013 that application was dismissed. A year later a second set of proceedings was issued and this time only the council was a defendant and the claim was now based solely in negligence (previous case law having established that no duty of care was owed by either the police or the housing departments in such circumstances).
13. A second claim was also made on behalf of the children that the council had failed to comply with its duties under the Children Act 1989 to safeguard them and promote their welfare. The local authority wanted the court to strike out that second claim as having no foundation in law. However, In October 2015 the court dismissed both elements of the family’s claim, finding that there was no basis to hold that a local authority owed a duty of care to protect against the anti social behaviour of others and that there was no legal foundation to hold that the Children Act 1989 created any additional duty of care with regard to the children.
14. The children then appealed with regard to the argument that a duty of care flowed from the local authority’s obligations under the Children Act. The court were reminded of the Court of Appeal decision in JD & Ors v East Berkshire Community Health & Ors [2003] EWCA Civ 1151 (31 July 2003) which found at para 87: where consideration is being given to whether the suspicion of child abuse justifies taking proceedings to remove a child from the parents, while a duty of care can be owed to the child, no common law duty of care is owed to the parents.
15. The claim then became about the local authority’s failure to remove the children from their mother. The appeal was heard in February 2016 and Slade J agreed that it was wrong to strike out the children’s claims based on the local authorities social services functions. The children’s case was then put on this basis, arguing that the local authority should be liable for the following failures:

  • Failed to assess the ability of the Claimants’ mother to protect her children from the level of abuse and violence they were subjected to. The Defendant did not carry out any timely or competent risk assessment and such assessments as were carried out were flawed and delayed ….
  • Failed to assess that the Claimants’ mother’s ability to protect the Claimants from abuse …. Further failed to assess that the mother was unable to meet the Claimants needs whilst she lived …. with them.

16. The council were then given permission to appeal and they succeeded. The Court of Appeal found the argument that the children should have been removed from their mother’s care as a means of dealing with anti social behaviour as “rather startling” and “highly artificial” (paragraph 41). In essence, the claim had nothing to do with any social services functions but was “in fact a criticism of the housing functions of the local authority” (paragraph 104).
17. The Court of Appeal in Poole considered at para 55 the implications of the earlier ruling in JD v East Berkshire that a duty of care could be owed to a child when considering the child’s removal from his parents: The Court was considering the decision whether to leave a child in a family where abuse was in question. For the purposes of such a decision there exists no true “third” party, in the usual sense. The actual or potential wrongdoing by those who would retain (or gain) custody of a child is central to the decision being taken. It is the mainspring of the relevant decision. That is a significant distinction from the current case.
18. There were two fundamental aspects to these proceedings which argued against making the council liable

  • the danger of encouraging defensive decision-making; and
  • the general absence of liability for the wrong-doing of others (paragraph 94). It is simply unfair for the local social services authority to be held liable, when the housing department, the landlord and the police could not. (paragraphs 95-98)

19. Although the court accepted that society placed a high emphasis on protecting vulnerable people, it was neither effective nor just to do so by singling out one agency of the State for tortious liability as against the others.
20. The Court of Appeal confirmed that the Court of Appeal decision in JD v East Berkshire relating to a possible duty of care to children when decisions were made about removing them from their parents, was inconsistent with the subsequent decisions of higher authority and should no longer be followed (paragraphs 99-101).
21. King LJ, an experienced family judge, was further critical of the argument that the courts would grant a care order in the circumstances of this case, re-stating the high threshold for the making of a care order with a plan for interim removal. Davis LJ stated that care proceedings to protect the children by removing them from their mother would have been “utterly heartless” and “utterly wrong” (paragraph 118).
22. There were suggestions that this might be going to the Supreme Court but so far I have not heard anything.

Consequences of this decision

23. It appears that the result of the CN judgments is that a common law claim in negligence for a negligent act or omission in a failure to investigate / failure to protect case before a care order will now fail; or at least will certainly be very hard fought by a local authority who will argue that any action in negligence against a Children’s Services Department is only now possible post a formal assumption of responsibility via a statutory decision to intervene.
24. This is a major judicial U-turn, which sets the law back 27 years by reinstating the largely discredited public policy reasons set out by Lord Browne-Wilkinson in X (Minors) v Bedfordshire CC [1995] 2 AC 633. Irwin LJ who delivered the main judgment has declared that the Court of Appeal decision in JD v East Berkshire [2004] QB 558 should no longer be followed. It was Lord Phillips in JD who declared that X (Beds) should not be followed as the policy objections said to point away from the imposition of a duty of care (defensiveness, resources, delicate and multi-disciplinary decision making to name but three) could not survive the Human Rights Act 1998 as local authorities were exposed to just those dangers under the Human Right Act.

Human Rights Act 1998

25. So if you are considering harm done to children because a care order was NOT made, it looks as if the only avenue will be that which flows from breach of the Human Rights Act 1998. For example, note the decision of the European Court in Z and Others v UK [2001]. This examined the refusal of the House of Lords in X v Bedfordshire in 1995 to find a duty of care existed to remove children from abusive home circumstances and thus denied them financial compensation for the significant harm they suffered. The European Court found the children’s Article 3 rights had been breached, so serious was the harm they suffered, and awarded damages.
26. These cases need very careful consideration about the legal mechanism identified for bringing a claim. Bringing a claim in negligence has different requirements than bringing a claim under the Human Rights Act.
27. Recent case law has also made an application under the HRA less attractive, as Asha will explain. I will give just a general overview here. First thing to note is that it seems unlikely that you will be making much reference to Article 3, which protects against torture and inhuman treatment. Much more likely is a claim under Article 8 whereby you argue that a local authority did not show sufficient or any respect to the child’s and family’s right to a family life, or Article 6 when you argue that the proceedings were not fair. This can be clearly shown in any section 20 ‘drift’ case, particularly if this narrows the eventual options for the child’s permanence.
28. Also you need to be alert at the outset to the operation of the statutory charge on any damages awarded if you are acting under a publicly funded certificate.

The Basics

29. The Human Rights Act (HRA) was passed to give direct effect to the Articles of the European Convention into domestic law. Prior to the HRA, if you wanted to claim that your human rights had been breached you had to take out an action in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Now, it is unlawful for any public body – including the courts and local authorities – to act in a way which is incompatible with a Convention right, unless they have no choice because they have to obey current statute law.
30. However, applicants who are receiving legal aid will need to consider carefully the implications of the statutory charge on any award of damages – this is discussed below. It seems likely that in most cases, pursuing an HRA application is simply not commercially viable. However, there are some avenues worth exploring and these are discussed below.

What is an unlawful act and what is a public authority?

31. ‘Unlawful Act’ is defined under section 6 (1) of the HRA. It is unlawful for a public authority to act in a way incompatible with a ECHR right UNLESS it doesn’t have a choice because of the way the domestic law is written.
32. A ‘public authority’ includes a court/tribunal or any person who carries out functions of a ‘public nature’ BUT it excludes the Houses of Parliament.

Who can make an application under the HRA?

33. Section 7 provides that a person can bring proceedings if they are, or would be a ‘victim’ of the unlawful act. There is a distinction between a ‘free standing’ application [section 7(1)(a)] and relying on your Convention rights in existing proceedings [section 7(1)(b)].
34. It is now clear that the court will expect formal applications made according to the Civil Procedure Rules NOT the FPR and this will have consequences for many issues, not least the role of the children’s guardian. For a clear analysis of the necessary procedural requirements, it is worth reading carefully the judgment of Cobb J in SW & TW (Children : Human Rights Claim: Procedure) (Rev 1) [2017] EWHC 450 (Fam) (08 March 2017). Asha will cover this in more detail. The biggest shock to those of us who enjoyed a few years of free standing applications made by Guardians was that the court pointed out this isn’t actually lawful under section Section 12 of the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 –cannot be authorised to act as litigation friends to child claimants although they may give advice about the appropriateness of a child making a HRA 1998 claim.
35. The full costs regime in Part 44 CPR 1998 also applies, including (in contrast to the position in family proceedings) the general rule that ‘costs follow the event’ (CPR, Part 44.2(2)(a): “(a) the general rule is that the unsuccessful party will be ordered to pay the costs of the successful party”; see also CZ v Kirklees MBC [2017] EWFC 11 at [61]));

What remedy can you get?

36. Section 8 of the HRA gives the court a discretion to remedy the breach of your human rights; the remedy must be ‘just and appropriate’.
37. This can include damages, if the court is satisfied this is necessary ‘to afford just satisfaction’. The court must take into account the principles applied by the European Court about awards of damages – but the problem with this is that the jurisprudence from the ECtHR is deliberately opaque about what makes the quantum of damages ‘just satisfaction’. Each case will depend on its own facts.

Article 41 of the ECHR

38. This sets out the requirement for ‘just satisfaction’ on violation of a ECHR right. For useful discussion about the application of Article 41, see paragraph 143 onwards of the judgment of the European Court in the case of P, C and S v UK [2002].
39. A clear causal link must be established between the damage claimed and the violation alleged. The Court will not be satisfied by a merely tenuous connection between the alleged violation and the damage, nor by mere speculation as to what might have been.
40. Compensation for damage can be awarded in so far as the damage is the result of a violation found. No award can be made for damage caused by events or situations that have not been found to constitute a violation of the Convention, or for damage related to complaints declared inadmissible at an earlier stage of the proceedings.
41. The purpose of the Court’s award in respect of damage is to compensate the applicant for the actual harmful consequences of a violation. It is not intended to punish the Contracting State responsible. The Court has therefore, until now, considered it inappropriate to accept claims for damages with labels such as “punitive”, “aggravated” or “exemplary”.

How have the courts approached damages under the HRA 1998?

42. The first case to consider damages under the HRA 1998 was Anufrijeva v London Borough of Southwark in 2003. At para 49 the court noted the conclusions of the Law Commission in its report on Damages under the Human Rights Act 1998 which suggested that the obvious analogy for a claim for damages under the HRA is a claim against a public authority in tort, such as negligence. But this analogy cannot be drawn too strictly as there are distinctions between the purpose behind an award of damages in tort and under the HRA.
a) damages are recoverable ‘as of right’ in a negligence claim (tort), but are at the court’s discretion in a HRA claim;
b) the purpose behind the damages claim is different; in negligence this is to put the claimant back in the position he would have been in without the negligent act, whereas in HRA claims the purpose is to provide ‘just satisfaction’;
c) That ‘just satisfaction’ may be provided by dealing with the HR breach, not necessarily compensating someone with money. The European Court has often found that in cases where there was a procedural, rather than substantive breach, a simple declaration that the claimant’s human rights were breached is in fact sufficient ‘just satisfaction’.
43. In the case of H (A Child – Breach of Convention Rights: Damages) [2014] the court was very clear that in the circumstances of this case ‘just satisfaction’ would NOT be achieved by a simple declaration that the parents’ rights had been breached. See paragraph 82.
It was not until June 2014 that these parents eventually managed to secure the return of their daughter to their care, exactly a year after she was placed with Mr and Mrs B. Whilst it is true that during that year the parents were having regular contact, supervised contact at a local authority contact centre is far removed from the joys of fulltime, unsupervised care of one’s own child. The residential assessment which began in June 2014 could have begun a year earlier. The cognitive assessment of the parents, not finally obtained until May 2014, could have been obtained months earlier. Unlike the parents in the Coventry case, these parents’ have suffered a loss of time with their daughter which was both unnecessarily lengthy and deeply distressing.

How should damages be assessed? And what is an appropriate award?

44. The difficulty is in situations where the harm suffered by the claimant is not one that can easily be measured in money – for example, loss of earnings is a lot easier to measure than being very upset or anxious about something. There is little guidance from the European authorities, save that the court tends to look at the nature and seriousness of the breach complained about, and the claimant’s own behaviour.
45. The European Court has also recognised ‘loss of relationship’ as another form of intangible injury – that is the loss of love and companionship which occurs when a family relationship is disrupted by breach of Article 8.
46. This is a clear difference between the kinds of damages that may be awarded for breach of contract or tort in the domestic courts, which may not recognise many of these types of loss or would require much stricter proof to be satisfied they had occurred. Some types of loss are going to be much more easily quantified than others.
47. The court in H (A Child) noted that there was not much assistance from previous cases in determining what amount should be awarded. In this case, each parent was awarded £6,000. See para 87:
48. Whilst the authorities referred to are of some small assistance, there are too few to be able to be confident that they indicate the broad parameters for making an assessment. In any event, it must, of course, be remembered that every case is different. Every case turns on its own facts. The assessment of damages in these cases is highly fact sensitive.
49. The court in X, Y. & Z re (Damages: Inordinate delay in issuing proceedings) [2016] approved the identification of the relevant issues by HHJ Lazarus in the Medway case [2015]:
a) The length of the proceedings
b) The length of the breach
c) The severity of the breach
d) Distress caused
e) Insufficient involvement of the parent or child in the decision making process
f) Other procedural failures.
50. WARNING: It is likely that the Court of Appeal decision in London Borough of Hackney v Williams & Anor [2017] is a clear attempt to row back from what appears to be ever increasing amounts awarded in damages for HRA claims. The Court decided that there had been no breach in this case so no damages fell to be awarded – BUT if they had, the Court of Appeal were clear that the £10K awarded at first instance was simply too high.

Damages awarded in other cases

51. P, C, S v the UK [2002] the European court awarded each parent €12,000 for breaches of their Article 8 and 6 rights in a case which involved removal of a baby at birth. This case also has some useful commentary as to how damages should be assessed.
52. Northamptonshire CC v AS [2015] – damages £16K.
53. Ferrari v Romania in the European Court of Human Rights in April 2015 where a father was awarded €7,500 after the state failed to properly engage with Hague Convention proceedings and caused delay.
54. In re A (A Child) in August 2015, the mother was awarded £3,000 for unlawful removal of her child.
55. Medway Council v M and T October [2015] awarded £20K to both mother and child for unlawful use of section 20 accommodation under Children Act 1989.
56. B (A Child) [2016] EWFC B10 January 2016 – £5K awarded for 3 year delay in revoking placement order that meant B lost out on developing a relationship with his siblings.
57. Case Soares de Melo c. Portugal (Application No 72850/14) [Feb 2016] award of €15,000 for decision to have children adopted without offering family sufficient support.
58. X, Y & Z re (Damages: Inordinate Delay in Issuing Proceedings) [2016] EWFC B44 (23 February 2016) – £45K awarded, (£20K for each child and £5K for the mother) highest level of damages known to date for misuse of section 20, and particular criticism of the failure of two IROs to act.
59. BB (A Child) [2016] 27th June EWFC B53 £7,500 awarded for misuse of section 20.
60. GD & BD (Children) [2016] 10-18 October 2016 EWCH 3312 – example of very poor police, LA and legal practice, described by Suesspiciousminds as ‘the worst case of the year’. £10,000 awarded to the mother and £5,000 to each child.
61. London Borough of Hackney v Williams and Anor [2017] – Court of Appeal sound the warning that £10K awarded at first instance was too high (in the event the court did not find a breach of statutory duty so no damages were awarded at all)
62. CZ (Human Rights Claim: Costs) [2017] EWFC 11 – £3,750 to each parent and child for unjustified removal at birth for about 3 weeks. However, costs likely to be completely absorbed by the statutory charge – publicly funded costs in region of £100K.

Opening up a closed system: The Second Bridget Lindley Memorial Lecture.

EDIT March 29th – you can now read a transcript and listen to the podcast here.

I was very pleased to be in the audience for Louise Tickle’s lecture on March 13th in Birmingham, organised by the Family Justice Council and with an impressive panel of Andrew Pack (AKA Suesspiciousminds), Dr John Simmonds of Coram/BAAF, Mr Justice Keehan and of course the President. The FJC will publish a transcript of the debate and to follow discussions on  Twitter, see #fjcdebate.

Since I first met Louise at CPConf2015 she has been an enthusiastic and tireless campaigner for prizing open the closed doors of the family court to shine some light on what goes on, in all our names. This has had an interesting impact – it does seem that more and more, those in the family justice system are realising that intelligent outsiders can actually help us do better, by showing us how practices and procedures that have become solidified and ‘the norm’ for us, appear bizarre and even frightening to those on the outside.

Louise was examining the game changer that is social media – no longer a niche hobby for ‘sad losers’ but something that is changing not just the way we communicate but the things we communicate about – personal, raw stories of human grief can be published by anyone, travel anywhere and be accessed at anytime. Louise began with a powerful story from her own childhood, where she was forced to confront at the age of 8 the ‘implacable authority’ of the adults around her to impose their choices. This left her feeling anguished and powerless. She has never forgot this feeling and it has driven her professional work.

https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/973613428798644224

What Louise has noticed is the rise in the number of people who contact her about their perceived experiences of injustice in the system. She cannot comment on whether or not these are based in ‘truth’ but to any journalist, this sounds as a warning bell – something is wrong if so many people feel so strongly about it.

https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/973617776416915456

We have to recognise this and we have to deal with it. There are enormous positives to social media – it allows people to communicate with others that they might never have met and find support. Louise was very appreciative of ‘legal Twitter’ – which was ‘awesome’ and commented about how useful it had been to allow journalists to ‘live tweet’ various proceedings.

https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/973618913274679296

Letting the light shine into proceedings will increase understanding and hopefully trust, which all appeared to agree was currently at dangerously low levels. The particular issue of recording interactions with professionals was raised and Louise was curt – ‘get over yourselves’. Parents want to record because they don’t trust professionals and they don’t have any power. It hurts not to be trusted but we need to be more open to considering the benefits that could flow from recorded transactions – particularly when there ARE examples of professionals behaving deplorably and making stuff up.

https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/973620942290243589

Louise also considered the impact on relationships of trust between parents and professionals by what appears to be the promotion of increased ‘surveillance’ of social media output as a way to gather evidence for assessments. Of course we don’t want to miss information that would inform us that a child is in danger, but given that we have finite resources of both time and emotional energy, do we really want to be directing both to increased surveillance, rather than building up relationships of trust? Perhaps the saddest comment of the night, for me, came from Dr Simmonds who remarked sadly that what underpinned his training as a social worker – the creation of relationships with others – seemed now so difficult to achieve.

https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/973623103753474048

Louise concluded by considering the ambit of Article 10. It appears that lawyers often overlook its essential component – freedom of expression includes the freedom to complain! She was horrified by the ‘arrogance’ of some local authorities who appeared to think that their work in child protection gave them immunity from scrutiny. Reporting on family cases was the hardest work she had ever done, as the fears of being held in contempt of court were very real. It was only with pro bono help from lawyers such as Lucy Reed of The Transparency Project that she was able to get permission from the court to tell ‘Annie’s’ story.

https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/973624643415404545

Louise was stark in her assessment. No other kind of proceedings, save those involved in issues of national security, permitted the kind of lack of scrutiny that is seen day in, day out in the family courts. It is an outrage.

https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/973626919047585792

We then turned to the Panel for comment. All agreed with Louise’s assessment that the State should be held to account – but how to do it? That’s the problem. The discussion ranged from worry about identification of children and the stigma that might then follow, the problems in expecting an overworked judiciary to anonymise and publish judgments and whether or not we should consider further accreditation for journalists who wish to report on family proceedings.

As Lucy Reed commented, there are enormous benefits to letting people in – to allow us to benefit from their fresh insights. The President agreed.

https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/973646079811039232

 

So, as ever, more questions than answers were raised. But without asking the questions, we will never find the answers and for too long the family justice system has been allowed to proceed on a secretive and inside track which has allowed bad practice to harden unchallenged. I was impressed by the quality of the conversation and its refreshing openness and honesty.  That we are even having this discussion is testament not just to the hard work of journalists like Louise but also the lawyers and legal bloggers who take the time to communicate their unease. And at the helm of course is the President.

I was very sad to be told I could not live tweet the location of the lecture due to security concerns for the President.  I struggle to understand how anyone would wish to interfere with his central and now long repeated message – we need to shine a light on bad practice and we do that by talking more, not less.  It will be interesting to see where our new President takes us, once Sir James Munby steps down in April.

I leave you with the words of one tweeter

 

Stereotypes

 

I am grateful for this guest post from a parent who wishes to remain anonymous. She considers  the dangers inherent in a stereotyped ‘one size fits all’ package of ‘intervention’ to meet the needs of ‘troubled families. They give a sense that difficulties are being addressed when in fact, they may not even be understood. Presenting service users as crude stereotypes gets in the way of ‘good’ working with families which requires engagement and relationship building. 

When my son entered Care it sometimes felt as though we have got him on the last transport out of a very dangerous city in a time of war. We, the adults, had been left behind to face a regime focussed on our ‘re-education’ while he had been rescued to a place where we could never go.

One of the most surreal moments I experienced during my re-education (Troubled Families Parenting Programme – 30 hours plus etc.) was sitting facing a panel of police officers while they explained the concept of ‘joint enterprise’. I was surrounded by parents of babies, tots, school refusing adolescents, young men beyond parental control and young women with extremely poor mental health. My peers appeared to be reasonable parents although we all had difficulties – mostly around poor mental health and violence if I had to guess. I’m not sure if telling us about one of the dangers of ‘gang’ membership could ever do anything more than frighten us and we were all frightened enough already.
.
I can only imagine that someone had an idea in their head of what our families needed and had developed a ‘one size fits all’ programme to address these stereotypical needs.

Presumably someone had decided it would be good for us to attend this session on the basis that we were all parents in need of social care who lived in an urban mixed ethnicity area. On our parenting course no one ever talked about the impact of poor mental health, poverty or domestic violence – all problems that were discussed were framed in terms of poor parenting/relationship skills and failure to take our place in and contribute to our communities. These omissions were not explained and no one seemed to consider this a lost opportunity or that courses such as these could even be harmful if they gave all a sense that difficulties were being addressed when, for many, they had not been understood. This is not to denigrate these courses but to use an analogy It was as if before the doctor in a NHS hospital would see us we were prescribed antibiotics and measured for a shroud by a private company with a contract to measure for shrouds and prescribe antibiotics only.

The reality is that families may have any number of difficulties that cause a rift between parent and child and indeed children may enter Care for lots of reasons including death of a parent, abuse, risks that adults in their lives pose, violence or addiction in the home, illness of parent or child and lack of resources to address difficulties. This lack of resources puts parents in poverty at most risk of losing their children although for each child and family there are likely to be a unique set of circumstances that can lead to the same outcome.

Working with Families

Good social work I believe, although I’m not a social worker, involves engaging families with an open mind, responding to all as individuals and engaging with the reality of their needs and circumstances. By contrast popular culture presents service users as crude stereotypes – feckless, drawn to crime, poorly educated, brutal and above all ‘less’. It is if all believe that it is not ‘morally acceptable’ to need services in and off themselves. The Victorians took the same stance. They gave the destitute ‘moral instruction’ via the pulpit. Church attendance was required if anyone needed to access parish relief. Parish councils gave way to local government. Eventually the welfare state was born. Those involved in its birth were incredibly proud of their achievement. Those now dismantling it seem very pleased with themselves too.

Children that enter Care

When a child enters Care it is almost inevitable they will experience difficulties within Care and beyond as a result of their experiences although with good support, the effect may be minimised and the child may thrive. That is what all hope for and should be working towards. Any way to help carers and others to understand why life might be difficult for a child in/from Care and how to help them has to be positive. There are ethical ways of presenting personal narratives to educate others about the impact of action/inaction, abuse, neglect using first person narratives possibly illustrated in cartoon form. Similarly if an abused child enters Care and in turn loses her own child to the State she too could give a first person narrative of how her abuse affected her and how her own corporate parent could have helped and prepared her for parenthood. If an adoptive parent wishes to give an account of how their previously abused child is struggling coming to terms with what happened to them and how it negatively impacts family life, than that is a first person account that can be taken at face value. These are all powerful, ethical ways to explain the impact of abuse and neglect and life experiences.

Why would we need to paint anyone as a demon before we can care about their child – even though that is the job all take on?

I have heard looked after children speak about foster carers in the most positive terms possible – about love and care given and received well into adulthood and beyond. It is good that all are prepared to understand children who enter Care who may not be able to name their complex emotions particularly if they have been badly neglected, physically or sexually abused.

Unfortunately some information provided to social workers, foster carers and adopters portrays a picture of birth families as universally neglectful and abusive and in the most extreme terms. One company in the business of selling their services promote what is described as ‘virtual reality’ to explain the impact of poor early caregiving on a child including virtual reality from the perspective of a fetus.

This material does not make clear what are beliefs, what is known and what is disputed. This is one of the worst portrayals of families who have need of services that I’ve seen but I’ve seen lots more that come from the same perspective much of it from big players in the market like the NSPCC. These are crude exercises in selling services and raising income and there appear to be no critical examination of their extremist nature and the harm they cause in and of themselves.

So what is the harm in material like this?

Simplistic portrayals of people who have need of children’s services, packaged as ‘virtual reality’ are not in anyone’s interest particularly a child’s. I question if suitable carers and adopters should need to be told birth parents are stereotypically abusive, emotionally detached and poor before they can understand how to love a child and try to reach a child irrespective of how unlovable they may first appear because they are hurting so much.

It is also questionable whether social workers who have considerable power to intervene in families are helped to view each situation on its own merits when exposed to material such as this. Shared parental responsibility when it applies, is hard for all and takes commitment to work through in a child’s best interest. Any carer or social worker is very unlikely to show any commitment to it after being exposed to educational material that presents parents as universally dangerous and neglectful .

The most disturbing aspect of material that reduces people to crude stereotypes is not that it is out there being used by local authorities day in, day out but that few people seem to question why this might be a problem even though if it were produced about any other group, much of it or so I believe, would be a hate crime. Is this an almost inevitable consequence of the ‘privitisation’ of care and adoption where many of the big players are slaves to their balance sheet – No examination of methods, no checks, no balances, no scrutiny, no control and hate packaged as love.

Stereotypes,  are used to avoid genuine engagement with social and economic problems and to justify widening inequality. The construction of neglect in contemporary discourse needs to be seen in the context of increasing public and media discourse fuelled by political ideology that stigmatises and demonises people living in poverty and holds them responsible for their children’s neglect because of their behaviour and poor choices.

Anna Gupta (2017) Poverty and child neglect – the elephant in the room?
Royal Holloway, University of London,