Three very important judgments from family law cases have been published which are worth reading this week.

The judgments span child contact with a jailed father convicted of child sex offences; a potentially ground breaking case about circumcision placing the decision with the child in question; and an attempt at removing a ban on reporting the names of medical professionals involved in ‘end of life’ proceedings for children.

The very good LexisNexis has provided well written summaries of these, which we are adding below.

Z v Z and others (Secretary of State for Justice intervening)

This case considered a child arrangement order for contact with an imprisoned father. In deciding to endorse the consent order for there to be indirect supervised contact between the father who was presently in prison following a conviction for sexual offences and the children, the Family Court held that the court had no power to compel a prison governor to facilitate the contact which was the subject of a child arrangements order under s 8 of the Children Act 1989.

Further, it held that a decision by a prison governor to refuse to facilitate contact, whether pursuant to an order made by the court or otherwise, was amenable to challenge in the Administrative Court, subject to the normal requirements applicable to claims for judicial review. Moreover, it held that it would be in both child’s best interests to approve the consent order that there be indirect supervised contact between the children and the father.

Re P (a child) (circumcision: child in care)

The case involved the applicant parents’ application, which failed, for the court’s authorisation for their son (P) to be circumcised, in accordance with the custom of the Muslim faith. P had lived all his life with extended maternal family members, who were likely soon to become his permanent carers under a Special Guardianship Order. The Family Court held that decision to circumcise P would be deferred until he was able to make his own choice, once he had the maturity and insight to appreciate the consequences and longer-term effects of the decision which he reached.

Abbasi and another v Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (PA Media intervening); Thomas and another v Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (PA Media intervening)

The case involved applications for the discharge of Restricted Reporting Orders (RROs) prohibiting the naming of any medical clinicians as being involved in the care and treatment of children who had been the subject of ‘end of life’ proceedings. Both sets of parents unsuccessfully applied for orders immediately discharging the reporting restriction orders (RPOs) prohibiting the identification of any treating clinicians and staff as being involved in the care and treatment of their respective children until further order and which had been made during ‘end of life’ proceedings prior to the children’s death.

The Family Division held that the court had jurisdiction to consider the continuance of the RROs, that the dispute about the continuance of each order fell to be determined by evaluating the competing rights under arts 8 and 10 of the ECHR in accordance with the approach described in Re S (a child) (identification: restriction on publication) [2004] ALL ER (D) 402 (Oct)and that the result of that process was that continuation of the RROs was justified and proportionate.

The latst child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

• Covid: School isolation rules could end in autumn
• ‘It is damaging for a young person’: Parents call for weighing children at school to be scrapped
• Smacking children increases bad behaviour, study finds

Legal Action for Women’s Support Not Separation group, which helps mothers fighting child removals in the family courts, has branched out to the US, bringing together campaigners from Britain and America.

The group’s expansion, which was announced on 26 June, will be officially launched at a webinar, Protecting our children, Defending our rights – UK & US, On 15 July, which will look at ways to end what the group calls “”child welfare’s” massive and heartless removal of children from low-income mothers and families, often children of colour.”

The conference will feature a panel which will include mothers from different communities in the UK and the US; DCFS/DHS [the US Division of Children and Family Services] Give Us Back Our Children; Disabled Mothers’ Rights campaign; Every Mother Is a Working Mother Network; Global Women’s Strike (GWS); Legal Action for Women; Psychotherapy & Counselling Union; Women Against Rape and Women of Colour/GWS.

The group will also be launching a self-help guide for mothers in the UK and the US during the online event, and will be sharing new research based on cases in the UK.

Anyone interested in attending the event, which is free, can register for a place here.

The latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

• Children’s court throws out plan by NSW welfare officials to remove baby from mother at birth (Australia)
• Plans approved for £2.3m children’s residential home and social services hub in Bridgend
• Decision on Covid-19 vaccines for children set to be delayed to give more time to gather evidence

A new law in Texas set to go live in September will make sure that child welfare workers and family courts consider additional medical opinions before removing children from their parents.

The law — drafted in response to an investigation by US news outlet NBC and passed following an in-depth research project in the state — found that legal and medical professionals were not always able to tell the difference between accidental and non accidental injuries in children.

Under the new legislation, carers accused of abuse based on a medical report will be able to request another opinion from a doctor with experience relevant to the child’s injuries. The judge overseeing the case is then required to consider the second opinion before making any child protection orders.

The new law also states that when a social services department refers a case for forensic assessment, the chosen physician must not have had any involvement with the initial report alleging abuse or neglect.

James Frank, the Texas state Representantive said:

“False removals are traumatic for kids first and foremost, but also for their parents. So we have to be more precise in the way we go through the removal process. I think sometimes when an expert in a white suit says something, there’s a tendency for [Child Protection Services] to go, ‘They’re 100 percent right.’ But that’s not always the case.”

The UK’s child protection sector has also come under fire for failing to correctly diagnose the cause of children’s injuries in such cases.

A judgment in 2019 highlighted concerns about health care professionals wrongly diagnosing accidental injuries as intentionally inflicted ones, leading to families being separated from their children. Judge Bedford who handed down the judgment said:

“It is imperative when treating medical professionals have made a diagnosis of non-accidental injury that they keep this under review and update this diagnosis when new medical evidence is received and give active consideration to convene a multidisciplinary meeting.”

The baby in the case was eventually returned to their parents and siblings, after having been separated for more than five months.

Following the judgment, Researching Reform called on the government to roll out robust training for all doctors working on cases with suspected non accidental injuries.

The latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

• Surrogacy snaps the mother-baby bond in two – we should not celebrate it as progress
• Forced adoption scandal: Experts fear health time bomb for thousands of hidden victims (Scotland)
• Open consultation: Domestic abuse support within safe accommodation: statutory guidance and regulations consultation
• Children’s social care survey results published

Welcome to another week.

The UK Home Office has published a list of support services for adults and children affected by domestic abuse in England and Wales.

The page offers the details of organisations tackling domestic abuse including services supporting the LGBTQ, religious, Black and Middle Eastern communities; as well as support for children, parents experiencing adolescent violence, those without settled status in the UK, and the elderly.

The list is very good in that it covers several kinds of abuse such as sexual assault, Female Genital Mutilation, forced marriage, economic abuse, stalking, honour based abuse and technological abuse.

There is also a dedicated section for people who don’t have settled status in the UK, to apply for settlement and access to benefits.

The section says:

“If your relationship with a British citizen or someone settled in the UK has broken down because of domestic abuse you may be able to apply for settlement as a victim of domestic violence.

The destitution domestic violence concession provides help if you are in the UK on a temporary visa as a partner, your relationship has broken down because of domestic violence and you have no money to support yourself.

The destitution domestic violence concession offers domestic abuse victims 3 months’ leave outside the immigration rules with the ability to apply for access to public funds.

This provides the opportunity to gain a temporary immigration status independent of the abuser and to fund safe accommodation, where victims of domestic abuse may consider applying for indefinite leave to remain or deciding to return to their country of origin.”

The page also offers information on how to get welfare benefits and housing advice, and access to support from your local job centre. The page explains that even if a job centre is closed, staff will still meet vulnerable people including those fleeing domestic abuse.

You can access the page here.

Groundbreaking tribunals for family law cases, backed by politicians and a Parliamentary Select Committee in Australia would provide families unable to access legal aid or lawyers, with a humane service to get help and support, its founders have said.

The model, which uses tribunals manned by panels of experts and an independent children’s lawyer, was developed by Queensland University professor Patrick Parkinson and Brian Knox, a former Principal Registrar of the Family Court and a District Court judge in Australia.

Parkinson said, “Our proposal provides access to justice and both quick and expert resolution of disputes for those who cannot get legal aid or afford lawyers.The proposal is that each case will be heard by a panel of three.

It will have an experienced family lawyer as chairperson, and appropriate experts including mental health professionals, drug and alcohol specialists, and those with extensive experience on issues of domestic violence and child abuse.

The tribunal, assisted by an independent children’s lawyer, will adopt an inquisitorial approach.”

Inquisitorial legal systems typically place more power in the hands of judges overseeing cases, and allows them to make directions and intervene during a case in ways which usually exceed options available in adversarial models currently being used in countries like England and Wales.

Australia began to look at alternative ways of processing family law disputes following the government’s admission that its conventional family courts – which it pioneered and which the UK exported – had been failing families for a long time.

The Australian government made the decision to abolish its current family court system in February, after the country’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, endorsed legislation to enact the move.

The family law tribunal is one of 29 recommendations set out in the Joint Select Committee on Australia’s Family Law System report, which the government will consider later on this year.

Many thanks to Charles Pragnell for alerting us to this development.

The latest child welfare items that should be right on your radar:

• Labour calls for apology on non recent forced adoption (Scotland)
• Mother and Baby Homes: State counters legal challenge by mothers (Ireland)
• MPs call for government apology into non recent forced adoptions (England)

A court in Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia, has ruled that taking children from parents over poverty is illegal, in a ground-breaking case which has made precedent in the country.

The case involved three children who were removed from their parents by social workers who had failed to try to provide state support for the family beforehand. The children spent two years in state care before they were reunited with their families.

The Tbilisi City Court ordered the Georgian government to pay each child £8,000 for the harm they suffered as a result of the separations.

The court case is the first to use Georgia’s new child rights focused lawsuits.

The process — produced in partnership with the European Council and using the Partnership for Good Governance guidelines — allows children to appeal decisions about them using a child-friendly form. The pioneering form enables children to write down their wishes and feelings, and ask the court for help and for assistance in appointing lawyers.

The court heard directly from the children in the case through the lawsuit they filed, which included details about the errors that were made during their child welfare investigations.

A Facebook post published by the Council of Europe’s Georgia office on June 15, said the court held that the decision was made in the best interests of the children. Lawyers representing the children said the judgment was “a great achievement for the judiciary.”

Growing concerns that children in England and Wales have been unjustly removed from their parents by local authorities simply because the families were experiencing poverty have been voiced by researchers, pioneering social workers and key stakeholders inside the child protection sector in recent years.

A growing body of research has shown that children living in the poorest areas are more likely to be taken into care, with single mothers being a significant at-risk group when it comes to inappropriate child removal.

Further reading:

• Suffer the little children and their mothers – Legal Action for Women report
• Poverty, Inequality, Child Abuse and Neglect: Changing theConversation across the UK in Child Protection?
• Children in poorest areas more likely to enter care
• Do No Harm – Andy Bilson