CA-2025-001731 - [2025] EWCA Civ 1342

Given the circumstances in which the proceedings concluded, there has been no judicial determination of the facts in this case. The following basic outline history is taken from the documents filed with the court.

The appeal concerns Y and N. They have a number of older half-siblings, including their half-brother, L. Neither the mother nor the father contested the making of a care order in respect of L at the IRH, and that order remains undisturbed by this appeal. L is currently in residential care, and the local authority’s plan is that he should, at the right time, transition to a specialist foster placement.

The mother and father separated in June 2022 when N was only two months old. N was their only child together. N remained living with his father; L and Y continued living with their mother. During 2022, safeguarding concerns were raised about the welfare of L and Y, principally focused on the mother’s poor home conditions, her lack of funds for heating and adequate food, alleged domestic abuse by the mother towards the father, the mother’s mental ill-health and her misuse of cannabis, and her lack of cooperation with professionals over a period of months. Police Protection Orders were made in respect of L and Y on 1 January 2023 and they were removed from their mother’s care; the local authority swiftly thereafter issued care proceedings, and interim care orders were made. Against the backdrop of safeguarding concerns about the father’s misuse of drugs, and his chronic excessive use of alcohol, the local authority issued care proceedings in respect of N in February 2023. In doing so, it did not seek the removal of N from the father’s care; instead, it sought and obtained an interim supervision order, on the basis that it would offer practical support to the father in his care of N. The two sets of proceedings were consolidated.

In September 2024, following a positive assessment conducted by the local authority, and with the approval of the Family Court, Y was moved from foster care to join N in the care of the father. By that time, the father had, with the local authority’s support, moved into a 2-bedroom property specifically so as to accommodate Y. We were told without contradiction that throughout the period in which the father was caring for N, and indeed prior to Y’s move into his home, the father had been regularly subject to hair strand testing for drugs and alcohol. This testing had showed, as the local authority well knew, varying levels of drug use (including cocaine, though possibly not active use) and chronic excessive alcohol use.

On 20 December 2024, the father attended the boys’ school to collect them at the end of the school day; he was observed to be drunk. The local authority was notified, and obtained the father’s agreement to the accommodation of the children over the Christmas period under section 20 CA 1989. In January 2025, the local authority sought and obtained an interim care order in relation to N. N was placed with his paternal grandmother, while Y was placed back with his foster carers.

During the spring of 2025, the father underwent community-based treatment for alcohol misuse; it is the father’s case that from early-March 2025 he has maintained total sobriety. Subsequent hair strand testing appears to offer some support for this claim.

During early 2025, special guardianship assessments were undertaken of the paternal grandmother and her partner as potential long-term carers for N. In that process, concerns were raised about the paternal grandmother’s partner’s responses to issues of historical sexual abuse within his own family, albeit he was not identified as the perpetrator of that abuse. Further focussed work on sexual risk was commissioned, and this was ongoing at the time of the IRH (see further at §13 below). Assessment was also undertaken of the paternal grandmother’s partner’s daughter (and her partner) as special guardians for Y. Subject to the outcome of DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) checks, this assessment was positive.