The Children’s Guardian’s Analysis
26.The Children’s Guardian completed her PLO analysis on 29 April 2022. I am indebted to her detailed description of T's health needs, which I found the most useful starting point to understand his profound disabilities. She confirmed that T has nine diagnoses, which requires twenty--four- hour care. He has the involvement of twenty-one professionals in his care and takes fifteen medications each day. 27.In her analysis, the Children’s Guardian confirmed that she could not support a return of T or V to their parents' care. At paragraph 40 of the report, she commented on V stating, "V identified her parents, T, grandparents and cousins as people who made her happy. V said she had no worries and was not sad about anything."28.She describes T as a sociable and a pleasant young boy, he is reportedly happiest when he is ‘people watching’. He enjoys interaction, he smiles when people talk to him and likes receiving hugs. It is The Guardian's view that she is able to support the local authority's view that due to the complexity and the uniqueness of V and T's individual needs, she supports separate placements. She however differs in terms of the plan for T and is clearly significantly opposed to the plan of adoption. She suggests that the allocated social worker has failed to give proper weight to the research evidence in relation to brain impaired children. She states this indicated that brain impaired children would react to sight, smell and hearing and thus, T would be able to identify his parents or V's features by their distinctive sounds and smells. 29.She refers to a piece of research by Reed and Harrison from 2002, which stated that social workers were at risk of erroneously assuming that contact with family is less significant in the context of disabled children. She said studies confirmed that the need for family contact for this group was at least as great as for non-disabled children.30.She set out the arguments in favour of adoption, and she accepts that there are arguments in favour, which I will not set out now because they are rehearsed elsewhere. Conversely, she outlined twenty-five arguments against adoption. She was particularly concerned about the life-limiting condition. She states at paragraph 88 of her report, "Every moment with his parents and sister is crucial for T due to his health needs and his presentation over recent months." She continues at paragraph 89, "It is for these reasons that it is my view that a plan of adoption in T's care would be disruptive for him". At paragraph 93 she states, "it is for this reason I strongly oppose the local authority's care plan of adoption."