D (A Child)

Judgment

Lady Justice King :

This is an appeal by Warwickshire County Council (“the local authority”) against the dismissal on 20 October 2016 by His Honour Judge Cleary sitting as a high court judge, of its application for a care order in respect of a little girl, ML, who was born 7 December 2015.

The central issue was whether ML had suffered a shaking/shaking impact injury whilst she had been in the sole care of her father in the hours which preceded her having been admitted to hospital by ambulance on 19 April 2016. The issue before this court is whether the judge, at the conclusion of a fact finding hearing, convened to determine the cause of ML’s injuries and, heard over eleven days commencing 28 October 2016, properly weighed and evaluated all the medical evidence put before him prior to concluding that he “could not hold” that ML’s father (or indeed mother) were responsible for the injuries suffered by ML.

Background

ML is the daughter of ID (“the mother”) and ML (“the father”). Both parents are Lithuanian. The parents began to live together a few weeks prior to ML’s birth. They set up home in a multi-occupation property in which they had their own room with a shower, together with the shared use of a kitchen on a different floor of the building. The judge was of the view that “the true nature of the relationship has remained something of a mystery”.

On 19 April 2016 ML had spent the first part of the day largely with her mother. In the afternoon, sometime between 15.30 and 16.00, ML was taken from the shared kitchen up to the parents’ room by the father. Although ML was seen briefly on several occasions by the mother when she went up to the bedroom, ML was thereafter in the care of the father. In broad terms the father’s case was that he had attempted to settle ML, who began to cry, he had picked her up, and she had “spat out” her dummy, “given a cough” and fallen unconscious. An ambulance was called and the father carried out CPR until the paramedics attended at the house at 17.45. ML was admitted to hospital, where she remained until discharged into foster care on 3 May 2016. Fortunately, given the seriousness of the brain injury she was found to have sustained, she appears to have made an excellent recovery,

A CT scan was undertaken on 19 April and a MRI on 22 April. The clinical picture as revealed in the hospital notes was one of ML having suffered an acute collapse requiring subsequent resuscitation including an episode of encephalopat