E (A Child), Re
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
- LORD JUSTICE McFARLANE
- LORD JUSTICE BRIGGS
Areas of Law
- Family Law
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The case is an appeal brought by the mother of a newborn, M, against an interim care order. The mother’s older child, C, sustained injuries resulting in prior care proceedings. Findings indicated excessive force was applied to C’s knees and multiple rib fractures out of mishandling due to tiredness or recklessness. The appeal questioned the sufficiency of these findings to justify an interim care order for M. The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, endorsing the broader context of parental care issues and likelihood of harm standard established in precedents such as Re J and Re S-B.
J U D G M E N T
1. LORD JUSTICE McFARLANE : This is an appeal brought by the mother of a very young child against the making of an interim care order by Her Honour Judge Penna on 23 October 2014. The child concerned is a girl, M, born on 16 October 2014, and therefore only seven days old at the time of the hearing.
2. The case raises once again the difficult decision that falls to be taken by a Family Court, where there have been discrete findings of fact made in earlier proceedings regarding different children of one or other of a pair of parents who have subsequently separated, and one of them has gone on to become the parent, the mother in this case, of another child.
3. Most recently the Supreme Court dealt with this matter of law in the case of Re J (care proceedings: possible perpetrators) [2013] UKSC 9 , [2013] 1 FLR 1373 . It is not necessary in the course of this short judgment to rehearse in full the legal argument which is canvassed so widely in their lordships' judgments, but at the core of the court's consideration was the paradigm situation where this point might arise in an almost sterile and clinical sense, which was described in the judgment in the case of Re S-B at paragraph 49, where Wilson LJ said this:
"The judge found the threshold was crossed in relation to W on the basis that there was a real possibility that the mother had injured J. That, as already explained, is not a permissible approach to a finding of likelihood of future harm. It was established in Re H [1996] AC 563 and confirmed in Re O [2004] 1 AC 523 that a prediction of future harm has to be based upon findings of actual fact made on the balance of probabilities. It is only once those facts have been found that the degree of likelihood of future events becomes the 'real possibility' test adopted in Re H . It might have been open to the judge to find the threshold crossed in relation to W on a different basis, but she did not do so."
4. The approach taken in Re S-B which had been questioned in the Court of Appeal judgments in Re J was endorsed by Baroness Hale in the course of her judgment in Re J :
"50.In In re S-B [2010] 1 AC 678 , the 'real possibility' that the mother had harmed J was the only basis upon which the judge concluded that it was likely that W would suffer harm in the future. There was nothing else. J had suffered bruises and all bruising to a tiny baby must be taken seriously. But they had probably been caused on one occasion by one pa