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

• New rules to help keep siblings in care together come into force (Scotland)
• Interactive map: more than 250 people committed child sexual abuse offences while involved in the Scouts (UK)
• National strategy for autistic children, young people and adults: 2021 to 2026 (England)

Welcome to another week.

The government has today launched the National Adoption Strategy, an initiative designed to make adoption easier in England and Wales.

The new strategy will speed up adoptions, and could potentially relax rules around who can adopt. The initiative has received an estimated £49 million to put into recruiting along with implementing a new framework of national standards for adoption agencies.

The announcement follows growing calls from leading social workers and researchers to make adoption the last port of call for children in care, and to try to keep children and their natural parents together wherever possible. The Strategy also comes as natural parents have increasingly begun to challenge their children’s adoption orders in court.

Our question this week then, is this: do you think the strategy is a good idea or a bad idea?

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

• Mother and baby home residents subjected to ‘involuntary detention’
• Corporal punishment and early childhood development in 49 low- and middle-income countries
• Ending Violence in Schools : An Investment Case

A judge has denied a birth father the right to be named on his daughter’s birth certificate following her adoption, in a case which included a direct challenge to the adoption order by the girl’s natural father.

The court held that such a move would be manifestly contrary to public policy, despite the High Court having the jurisdiction to grant a birth parent a declaration of parentage in respect of a child following the lawful adoption of that child, and the adoptive parents in the case supporting the application.

In an extraordinary move, the Attorney General — who under today’s Conservative government essentially engages in legal matters to protect the government’s interests — is an intervenor in this case.

The judgment itself appears to be doubling down on current adoption policy to shut down what the courts and the government may now fear is an upswing in legal challenges to adoption orders by natural parents.

But why protect public policy around adoption in England and Wales if it is outdated and harmful?

Britain is one of only a small number of countries implementing non consensual adoptions, which allow the state to remove children from parents without their consent. It also practices a narrow and closed form of adoption, despite legislation which appears to promote more open policies, creating an apartheid between natural families and adoptive carers. All of these practices embedded within our current public policy on adoption, have been shown to be harmful or non-evidence based in robust and high quality research.

Additionally, adopters’ wishes and feelings are given more weight and prioritised over the child’s and his or her natural family during the court process and beyond, dispensing altogether with basic child welfare principles and the mandate, set in law, to place children’s best interests at the heart of every decision.

Unlike several countries that enable open adoptions promoting contact between natural parents and their children after adoption, and acknowledging that such contact is important and beneficial to children, and in some cases even using carers to work as a bridge between children and their natural parents to assist with reunification, Britain’s public policy by comparison is closed, rigid, and to our mind, criminally and civilly negligent.

Lexis Nexis produced two summaries of this case, one which was published yesterday and another, which is more focused, published today. We are adding extracts from the second summary, by barrister Poonam Bhari, below:

Family analysis: In H v R and another (Attorney General for England and Wales intervening), the court declined to make a declaration of parentage in favour of a birth parent in relation to an adopted child, on the basis that to do so would be manifestly contrary to public policy for the purposes of section 58(1) of the Family Law Act 1986 (FLA 1986). The court also made it clear that even if a declaration of parentage had been made, it would not have conferred parental responsibility, or any legal rights, nor would it have meant that the applicant could resume a role in the child’s life. Poonam Bhari, barrister at 3PB Chambers, looks at the issues.

H v R and another (Attorney General for England and Wales intervening) [2021] EWHC 1943 (Fam), [2021] All ER (D) 67 (Jul)

What are the practical implications of this case?

On 29 September 2020, Mr Justice MacDonald, handed down his first judgment in this case (H v An Adoption Agency (Declaration of Parentage Following Adoption) [2020] EWFC 74, [2020] All ER (D) 105 (Nov)), having decided that the High Court has jurisdiction to grant a birth parent a declaration of parentage, where there has been a lawful adoption of that child (per Part 1 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 (ACA 2002)), and identified that when Family Procedure Rules 2010 (FPR 2010), SI 2010/2955, Pt 8 was drafted, it may not have been appreciated that it is open to a birth parent to apply for a declaration of parentage under FLA 1986, s 55A(1).

FPR 2010, SI 2010/2955, r 8.22 states as follows:

(1) If the applicant or the person whose parentage or parenthood is in issue, is known by a name other than that which appears in that person’s birth certificate, that other name must also be stated in any order and declaration of parentage.

(2) A court officer must send a copy of a declaration of parentage and the application to the Registrar General within 21 days beginning with the date on which the declaration was made

MacDonald J identified a lacuna, it not being clear whether the court has the power to disapply FPR 2010, SI 2010/2955, r 8.22(1), and directed that a copy of his first judgment be disclosed to the Family Procedure Rule Committee.

The primary issue for the court in respect of the second judgment was one of consideration of the merits of the application and public policy arguments (FLA 1986, s 58(1)).

What was the background?

This case should be read together with the first judgment of MacDonald J (H v An Adoption Agency (Declaration of Parentage Following Adoption) [2020] EWFC 74, [2020] All ER (D) 105 (Nov)). A DNA test dated 16 November 2015 confirmed that the applicant was the birth father of an adopted child. The child became the subject of care proceedings under Part IV of the Children Act 1989 in 2015. The applicant was made a party to those proceedings. On 6 April 2016 the child was made subject to a final care order and a placement order.

No orders were made during the care proceedings or subsequently directing the local authority to cause the child’s birth certificate to be amended to record the applicant as the child’s father, whether by a declaration of parentage under FLA 1986, s 55A(1) or otherwise.

The applicant sought permission to appeal the placement order, which was refused on 26 July 2016. The child was placed for adoption and an application for an adoption order was made by the child’s then prospective adopters.

The applicant applied for permission to oppose the making of the adoption order. That application was refused on 28 February 2017. The child was made subject to an adoption order under ACA 2002, s 46 on 12 April 2017. On 27 June 2019, out of time, the applicant applied for permission to appeal the making of the adoption order, which was refused on 17 July 2019.

On 2 March 2020, the applicant issued an application for a declaration of parentage, however the C63 application form omitted to mention that the child had been made the subject of an adoption order. The applicant saw his application as a route to resuming his relationship with the child, starting with indirect contact on a monthly basis, leading to fortnightly indirect contact. The application was opposed by the adoption agency. The child’s adoptive parents did not wish to actively participate in the proceedings.

On 29 September 2020, MacDonald J decided that the High Court has jurisdiction under FLA 1986, s 55A(1) to grant a birth parent in the position of the applicant a declaration of parentage following the lawful adoption of that child under ACA 2002, Pt 1, but having dealt with the preliminary issue of jurisdiction, the court identified a number of issues (para [10(i)–(viii)]), directed the adoption agency to file further evidence (para [11(i)–(v)]) and invited the Attorney General to intervene in the proceedings.

What did the court decide?

The court considered the written and oral submissions on behalf of the applicant, the second respondent and the intervenor, ie:.

1. •on behalf of the Attorney General it was submitted that in the event FPR 2010, SI 2010/2955, r 8.22(1) cannot be disapplied, the court can look at invoking the public policy exception at FLA 1986, s 58(1), highlighting the ‘cardinal importance’ that adoptive placements are protected from situations where the confidentiality of such placements can be compromised (paras [19], [21]–[23]) and that the decisions in Re F (Paternity Registration) [2011] EWCA Civ 1765, [2013] 2 FLR 1036 and AS v CS [2021] EWFC 34, [2021] All ER (D) 48 (Apr) enable the court to disapply the rule (para [20])
2. •it is for Parliament and not the courts to formulate public policy (para [24]) and the relevant public policy considerations in this case concerned the practice of adoption in this jurisdiction, which the court analysed (paras [25]–[30])
3. •the public policy developments of adoption law relate to the creation of a permanent family unit, the confidentiality of such a placement and the importance of a child being able to choose to obtain information as to their origins, with the requirement for advice, sign posting and counselling for an adopted adult before being able to access adoption records/original birth certificate (ACA 2002, s 78(3))
4. •FPR 2010, SI 2010/2955, r 8.22(1) must be interpreted in light of the overriding objective (FPR 2010, SI 2010/2955, r 1.1), in particular where the welfare interests of a child and justice are not served by applying a particular rule it must be open to the court not to apply it (para [63]), and
5. •that the court had declined to make a declaration of parentage this would not prevent the child from being able to understand who the birth father is, as recognised by Mr Justice Cobb in Re M and N (Twins: Relinquished Babies: Parentage) [2017] EWFC 31, [2018] 1 FLR 293 (para [72])

In this case the court did not need to exercise its discretion to disapply FPR 2010, SI 2010/2955, r 8.22(1), having declined to make a declaration of parentage on the grounds that to do so would be manifestly contrary to public policy for the purposes of FLA 1986, s 58(1) (para [73]).

The court confirmed the firmly established elements of public policy recognised by the law as it relates to the practice of adoption (para [58 (i)–(v)]).

You can read the judgment in full on BAILII.

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• Petition asks for an investigation into forced adoptions

A free online webinar taking place this evening at 7pm, will highlight the way families experiencing poverty are treated by the family courts and social services in England and Wales, and the United States.

The conference, which has been organised by six support and advocacy organisations including Every Mother is a Working Mother Network, and the Global Women’s Strike (GWS), will also offer an online tool for families who are engaged with children’s social services.

Scheduled speakers for the event include Melody Webb, Mothers Outreach Network and Joyce McMillan, JMacForFamilies.

Further details for the event can be found on Facebook, and you can register to attend the conference on Evenbrite.

Welcome to another week.

A state in the US has decided to stop pushing adoption as the gold standard for children in care after it found that the policy pitted foster carers against birth families.

In a pioneering U-turn, the state of West Virginia has now implemented a completely different model, which sees foster parents working with natural parents so they can be reunified with their children.

Our question then, is just this: do you think England and Wales should adopt the model too?

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

• This week’s children and education complaint decisions from the LGSC Ombudsman (includes a rising number of complaints against social workers, a failure to support a victim of domestic abuse and carers reapplying to foster children).
• Children with parents in prison ‘the forgotten victims of crime’
• COVID-19’s Effects on Kids Are Even Stranger Than We Thought

A story in The Independent today looks at the growing number of men, women and children in the UK who want to revoke their adoptions, the experiences of some of these adoptees, and how this movement ties in with the movement asking for an apology for forced adoptions.

Th adoptees in the story say that adoption revocation is a human right, and they should be allowed in law to live within their chosen identity.

The piece offers information about a pioneering survey which has found that a staggering percentage of adoptees were abused, and many now wish to revoke their adoptions in order to heal from their childhoods.

There is also expert comment from family law barrister Naomi Wiseman, who explains the difficulties in revoking adoptions in England and Wales, and Professor Anna Gupta, who outlines the risks involved with adoption and why it is only suitable for a very small number of children.

You can read the story for free by registering with The Independent.

The story can be accessed here.

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

• Paedophile ‘massive danger to children’ with victims across UK
• Family court president’s report on transparency will be published end of July, and more in his latest update
• Resources launched to help young people with a learning disability