The procedural context
9.V’s parents are “M” and “F”. They are a couple. They have two older children, “W” (4) and “X” (2). W and X were the subject of lengthy public law proceedings, brought by a different local authority, LB Tower Hamlets. During those proceedings it was determined that M lacked capacity to conduct the litigation, and she was represented by the Official Solicitor. 10.A final hearing in W and X’s proceedings took place in March 2021. On M’s behalf the Official Solicitor put up strong opposition to the local authority’s case. The local authority was put to proof on the s31 threshold criteria, which the Official Solicitor did not accept were met. The expert evidence on which the local authority sought to rely, an assessment carried out by the London Infant and Family Team (“LIFT”), was robustly challenged. 11.The final hearing lasted for 13 days, partly because of the range of issues that needed to be determined and partly because it was necessary to take the evidence at a slow pace in order to ensure M’s effective participation. 12.I gave judgment at the end of the hearing, on 19 March 2021. My judgment ran to 39 pages. In it I set out the findings I made on the disputed issues of fact and my conclusions about the evidence. I found some of the local authority’s threshold allegations proved, but not others. I accepted some of the parents’ criticisms of the LIFT assessment, but not all. Overall I found that the conclusions of that assessment were sound. I determined that neither parent would be able to care for the children, together or separately, and that unless there was a family member available to care for them (which at that stage was a possibility, but no more) this was a case where nothing else other than adoption would do. 13.The Official Solicitor and the father appealed my decision. Permission to appeal was refused by the Court of Appeal. 14.The ultimate outcome of those proceedings was that W and X were placed with a relative overseas under special guardianship orders. 15.I did not publish my March 2021 judgment at the time but intend to publish it, in anonymised form, together with this judgment, so that the points I make now can be better understood. 16.During the course of the previous proceedings, M and F moved from Tower Hamlets to Newham. When LB Newham became aware of M’s third pregnancy, in early 2023, it requested the files from Tower Hamlets. The initial social work statement prepared in V’s proceedings, unsurprisingly, relies heavily on information from the previous proceedings relating to W and X. Four of the eight threshold findings sought relate to the previous proceedings.