The Court of Appeal live streamed a hearing for a case called M(A child) today, which looked specifically at what kind of access journalists can have to family law cases.

This is what the Judiciary page said about the case:

4 March 2021

NOTE:  THIS IS A LIVE STREAM OF A FULLY REMOTE HEARING BEING HEARD ON MICROSOFT TEAMS

Re: M (a child)

By Appellant’s Notice filed on 21 August 2020, Melanie Newman, in her capacity as a public interest journalist, applies for permission to appeal the order of Mrs Justice Roberts sitting at the Family Division at the Royal Courts of Justice dated 31 July 2020 whereby she refused her application to be provided with permission to access court documents in relation to public law proceedings concerning a child which concluded in October 2018 save for a limited number of documents.

Background:

The child was made the subject of a placement order by HHJ Hess when she was 4 years old. The Court of Appeal quashed the order on 20 February 2018 with the judgment of the Court holding that the judge had failed adequately to engage with the central allegation advanced by the local authority namely that the child was at risk of physical or emotional harm in her mother’s care. The matter was remitted to the Family Court but no retrial took place. Instead, the local authority no longer sought orders separating the child from her mother and with the result that the child  returned to live with her mother where she remains to date.

The Appellant is seeking to investigate the case and in particular to look at how events unfolded which led to a local authority seeking permanently to separate a young child from her mother by way of a placement order, but who, a year later following the quashing of the placement order by the Court of Appeal, withdrew its application for a placement order and allowed the child to return  to the care of her mother where she remains.

The hearing was streamed here.

You can see the list of cases being live streamed by the Court of Appeal, here.

You can also look at data on the Court of Appeal’s Civil Division, here.

We are aware of the notice not to screenshot the proceedings, however there are no children or family members in the footage or any elements in the hearing which could reasonably lead to the prohibition of taking screen shots of this hearing, so we are adding a screen shot below. If the judiciary takes issue with it, we’ll respond swiftly.

The Children’s Care Review, which has been set up to examine the current state of the children’s social care sector, has launched its website and announced the individuals sitting on their “Experts By Experience” panel.

The website offers an introduction to the Review’s work, and the Review’s chair, Josh MacAllister, and provides the latest developments at the Review, much like the current inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.

The “Experts By Experience” panel, comprising of 16 individuals who have experience of the care system was announced today, and include Chloe Robinson, a 17-year-old girl who is still inside the care system; Judith Denton, CEO of The Transformed You; Chris Wild, a prominent campaigner for children in care; and Sean Geoghegan, a founding member of the National Association of Young People In Care.

The panel also includes a range of people who have not experienced care directly, and include a former social worker turned adopter and kinship carer; a trustee of the charity Family Rights Group; and a researcher who has advised the current government on policy for children in care.

These appointments are likely down to the government feeling they need to oversee and steer those on the panel, which, as with the child abuse inquiry, could lead to heightened tensions and ongoing conflict within this panel.

The Review’s page for the panel, while featuring a BAME woman at the top of the list, fails to place the children and young men and women on this panel at the very top together, which seems to highlight the government’s and the Review lead’s ongoing deafness to the nuances in the sector.

Joining Chloe Robinson on the panel as a young person in care or with care experience, are: Rhiannon Parkinson, Charmaine Orchard, Asif Salarzai and Jerome Harvey-Agyei.

Another new appointment was also announced. Shazia Hussain, who is a civil servant, will head up the review team which is made up of civil servants from across various government departments but does not go on to say who has been appointed to the review team.

And we don’t mean to be picky, but, terrible URL.

You can access the website here, and read about the “Experts By Experience” panel here.