relative
ly brief re-engagement with them has adversely affected her; iii)The mother has in fact currently ‘fallen out’ with her birth mother; the prospects of any family placement within the birth family being free from conflict or drama is small; iv)The mother feels sufficiently strongly about the issue of assessment that were it to go ahead, she fears that it could destabilise her currently reasonable mental health, and jeopardise her own chance to care for F; she does not feel that she is in a psychologically strong place, and feels anxious about embarking on the next phase in which she will be assessed in the community with F with this ‘hanging over her head’; I have in mind the expert opinion which suggests that if the mother engages successfully in psychological therapies, she may well be in a position safely and appropriately to care for her daughter; v)Any assessment of the birth family would create divisions within her family – her parents who adopted her many years ago; and with her foster parents; vi)The birth family, as a matter of law, ceased to be legally the mother’s family when the mother was adopted; there are no recognisable enduring legal rights; vii)The Article 8 ECHR rights of the birth family are non-existent, or at best highly tenuous, given the lack of legal rights and the limited relationship between the birth family and the mother and particularly F; Miss Anning understandably relied in this regard on the comments which I made in Re TJ (Relinquished Baby: Sibling Contact) [2017] EWFC 6, and those of Peter Jackson J as he then was in Seddon v Oldham MBC (Adoption: Human Rights) [2015] EWHC 2609 (Fam) at [2](1), to the effect that the making of an adoption order brings pre-existing Article 8 rights as between a birth parent and an adopted child to an end. 16.Ms Kelly, on behalf of the Children’s Guardian, is, first and foremost, critical of the Local Authority for the delay in bringing this issue to the court many months after it first accommodated F. She further contends that no obligation falls on the Local Authority to assess the birth family in this case, and indeed that given the mother’s opposition to this course, it would be counter-productive for it to do so. In this, she aligns herself with the position taken, and the arguments advanced, by Ms Anning on behalf of the mother. She makes the additional point that one of the key philosophies which underpins a family placement for a child who cannot be cared by his/her parents is to ensure the continuity for the child of blood ties within established networks, where a parent may be able to continue to play a normal/natural role; this, she submits, would not truly be available here for although blood ties would be restored/preserved, the current difficult and tenuous emotional ties between the mother and her birth family, and the absence of legal relationship which was of course dissolved by the adoption many years ago, would make any placement very problematic indeed. Legal Principles 17.Although I was not specifically addressed on the relevance of Part III CA 1989, the issue in the case can essentially be traced back to the qualified obligation on local authorities “to promote the upbringing of [children in need] by their families” (section 17 ibid.) (emphasis by underlining added), and section 22C ibid. which imposes an obligation on a local authority to place a looked after child with (among others) “a relative, friend, or