A (a child), Re

Mrs A, the maternal grandmother, applies in person for permission to appeal against orders made in relation to C, her granddaughter, who was born on 6 December 2003 and so is now aged three. The orders were made by Her Honour Judge Carr QC in the Sheffield County Court on 19 April 2007. They were made at the end of a hearing over four days of applications by Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council (“the local authority”) for care and placement orders referable to C. In the proceedings C’s mother was the first respondent; she opposed the making of the care and placement orders and argued that it was in the best interests of C, who was and is in short-term foster care, to be returned to her care. The second respondent was the non-marital father of C and he played no part in the proceedings just as he no longer plays any part in the mother’s life. The third and fourth respondents were the maternal grandparents; they opposed the orders sought by the local authority and contended either that C should return to the mother’s care or that she should be placed into their care under a residence order, albeit perhaps supported by a supervision order. In the first instance, of course, they needed leave to apply for that residence order. The fifth respondent to the proceedings was C herself, by her Children’s Guardian, who supported the local authority’s applications.

In the event the judge refused the grandparents leave to apply for a residence order; rejected the mother’s case that she would be likely to be able within a reasonable time-frame to offer adequate care for C; and instead made a full care order referable to her and an order authorising her placement for adoption.

There is no doubt that immediately following judgment on 19 April 2007 the applicant expressed an intention to appeal to this court and, in effect, asked the judge for leave to appeal. Indeed in a postscript to her judgment, which has been transcribed, the judge describes an “appalling altercation” in court, in the course of which the applicant verbally abused a social worker and was prevented from physically assaulting her only by the usher and the security officers of the court. The judge says that she sensed that the applicant was also about to attempt to assault her but that instead the applicant threw down a letter, obviously drafted before the judgment had been delivered, in which she set out her grounds of appeal. The judge considered the contents of the letter and refused permission to appeal. Notwithstanding that immediate indication on the part of the applicant that she wished to appeal, albeit an indication made in an entirely unacceptable manner, the applicant’s notice of appeal to this court is dated as late as 23 July 2007; and it can therefore be seen that the applicant needs a substantial extension of time, namely about nine weeks, for bringing this proposed appeal. Upon receiving information from the applicant that the local authority are proposing to conduct a matching process of C with prospective adopters on 20 September 2007 and to place her with them within two weeks thereafter, I directed that the hearing of this application, first fixed to take place on 9 October 2007, should be brought forward to today.

At the hearing in April the judge was told that the mother was pregnant by a man other than the father of C and was due to give birth early in September 2007. The applicant tells me that in fact the baby was born yesterday. In her judgment the judge expressed the hope that there would be substantial cooperation between the mother and the local authority referable to arrangements for the coming baby, and substantial support given by the local authority to the mother in her aspiration to care for the baby, with the result that, so the judge hoped, no court would feel obliged to take in relation to the baby the course which, on the evidence, she felt obliged to take in relation to C. The applicant tells me today that the local authority are inviting the mother to go to a residential mother-and-baby home with the baby following discharge from hospital and that, so far as she knows, the mother proposes to accept that proposal.

Before the judge the mother, who was represented, appears to have agreed that, for a variety of reasons, the threshold to the making of a care order referable to C, set by s.31 of the Children Act 1989, was crossed. In the small bundle of papers provided for my use there appears to be a typed up version of the threshold document, as finally agreed; it appears to have been signed by the mother; and, as the applicant points out to me, it is dated 19 April 2007. One of the applicant’s grounds of appeal is that, and she says that she can confirm this from her own knowledge of events on 19 April, the mother did not in fact sign the document on that date; and that, in that the mother cannot read or write properly and in that the agreement was not explained to her by her counsel, the judge was wrong to treat the mother as having agreed to it. In fact in her judgment the judge explained that, having read a large amount of evidence and indeed having heard orally from a number of witnesses, she would undoubtedly have made findings in accordance with the document had the facts recited in it not been agreed. There is no doubt that in the document there is substantial reference to C having suffered from domestic violence between the mother and the father prior to their separation in December 2005. One of the applicant’s arguments is that, in that the father has been off the scene since then, there was no continuing risk to C if living with the mother or indeed if living with herself and the maternal grandfather. As I have sought, however, to point out to the applicant this afternoon, there is much more material in the threshold document than such as relates to domestic violence perpetrated by the father upon the mother. There is reference to incidents of violence in the grandmaternal home which C witnessed as well as to violent incidents between the mother and other persons. The document, and thus the judgment, also contain material that C suffered substantial neglect both when cared for by the mother and when cared for by the applicant in terms of cleanliness, hygiene and properly observant care.

The mother, who is aged 19, is the oldest of five siblings. All of them were made the subject of care orders, although the order referable to the mother has of course expired. The four younger siblings, all boys, remain under the age of 18 and thus remain in care; and they have been placed by the local authority with the grandparents, namely their own parents. The judge found that the mother and the four younger children had all suffered substantial emotional and physical neglect in the home of the grandparents. The judge’s reach back into history in this regard is the subject of another of the proposed grounds of appeal, namely that she should not have allowed the local authority to rely upon evidence taken from proceedings against the grandparents in the Crown Court in 1996 in which they were, on the direction of the judge, acquitted of charges of neglect of the children. There, so I believe, the applicant misunderstands the nature of the proceedings which the judge was conducting in April 2007: before the draconian step is taken to approve the placement of a child outside her or his biological family, all relevant evidence needs to be surveyed. Of course the judge would have fallen into error if she had taken the evidence filed in the proceedings in the Crown Court as having been established to the satisfaction of the jury. But there is nothing in the judgment to indicate that the judge fell into any such error. Indeed I have pointed out this afternoon to the applicant that I see no specific reference in the judgment to this material at all. The applicant’s response has been that such may be true but that there was significant reference on the part of the judge to it in the course of the hearing; but, to the extent that the judge did rely on the material, she did so because, having allowed the appropriate opportunity for the grandparents (who the applicant tells me had to represent themselves at the hearing) to contest the material, she found the evidence to be true.

In her judgment the judge expressed profoundly negative comments about the candidacy of the grandparents to care for C. She said that they were “not people that any court could consider suitable for the long term care of” C and that “their parenting is such that they should not have the long term care of any infant child”. These are categorical findings on the part of the judge. Although this afternoon the applicant has made, in a way, an attractive submission in which she has accepted past parenting errors on her part and on the part of the grandfather but has protested that people do change and that her sons, for example, adore C just as she and the grandfather adore C, I do not see how in this court the applicant could secure a judgment to the effect that the judge’s verdict upon her and the grandfather was not open to her. In her grounds of appeal the applicant does not begin to address that monumental task; and I have sought to explain this afternoon to the applicant the limitations upon the ability of the judges here to set aside, as a finding which the lower court judge was not entitled to reach, a verdict such as that passed by the judge upon the capacity of the grandparents to care for C. The judge’s conclusions in that regard were said by her to be based upon a negative assessment of them by a social worker team led by Mr Rooney, who gave evidence to her which, although the applicant tells me that he was guilty of making a number of factual errors in his report, the trial judge chose to accept. The judge’s view was also based upon an assessment by Ms Marsh, a forensic child psychologist; and upon previous assessments by Ms Towers. Indeed the judge stated that there were many assessments of the grandparents which highlighted in a very extreme way the deficiencies in their parenting of their five children. The judge conceded that the applicant and her husband loved their children and loved C, with whom they have until recently had fairly frequent supervised contact following her reception into care. But it appears that the judge had no hesitation in ruling out their candidacy for C’s safe long-term care. In her judgment the judge took more time in assessing the mother’s own case for a resumption of C’s care but in the event, partly by reference to the mother’s pregnancy, the judge excluded the possibility that the mother could present herself as an adequate carer for C in a time-frame acceptable for her.

Another ground of the proposed appeal is that even prior to the end of the hearing the judge had made up her mind that C should be taken into permanent care and thereupon adopted. The basis for this suggestion is a passage in the judge’s postscript in which she sought to describe the applicant’s outburst in court. The judge explained that she had gently tried to tell the applicant throughout the hearing, as the evidence unfolded, that her situation was hopeless. I do not construe that comment as one in which the judge revealed that her mind was closed to argument on the part of the applicant prior to judgment. The reality is that in many cases we family judges soon form a view, always provisional yet sometimes confident, that the result should either be a return of the child to her or his family or alternatively her or his placement for adoption. There is nothing unjudicial or appealable about a situation in which a judge forms such a view and indeed articulates it prior to judgment.

Although it must be heart-rending for the applicant, for the grandfather and indeed for the mother to come to terms with the judge’s orders, I am clear that the applicant has no realistic prospect of appealing against them; and so I refuse permission to appeal. The delay in issuing the appellant’s notice is also substantial and I also refuse an extension of time to legitimate it.