[2024] UKUT 159 (AAC)

DJB said that B told her about the cautions but not what they were for; she said she thought they were for something “low risk”; in oral evidence, DJB maintained that she never asked B what the cautions were for. DJB said that the reason she did not pass on the information about the cautions to the fostering agency was that she wanted B to “tell the story” himself (it was not her story to tell, as she put it in her 1 March 2022 response to the social worker’s report).

In that letter, DJB said she knew about “the caution” (with no date as to when); whereas in her (later) written representations to DBS, she said she didn’t know about the cautions until late October 2021 – and that she had wanted to tell the fostering agency about them, but they kept “putting her off”.

DJB said that she had been eager for the fostering agency to “check” B and that she had sent them emails to this effect; she said she could not produce those emails because they were on the ‘egress’ email system, which she could not now access. DJB contended that the fostering agency were to blame for the unfortunate way that C’s placement with her ended (because they should have “checked” B earlier).

In some of her written representations to the Upper Tribunal, DJB emphasised that B had been not convicted of anything, was not legally represented at the time of the caution for the indecent image sent to a 13-year-old girl, and that B had mental health difficulties that could have contributed to that incident.