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Jersey Unreported Judgments |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> Jersey Unreported Judgments >> In the matter of G (Care Order) [2013] JRC 111 (13 June 2013) URL: http://www.bailii.org/je/cases/UR/2013/2013_111.html Cite as: [2013] JRC 111 |
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Before : |
W. J. Bailhache, Q.C., Deputy Bailiff, and Jurats Le Cornu and Blampied. |
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Between |
Minister for Health and Social Services |
Applicant |
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And |
A (the mother) |
First Respondent |
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G (the child) , acting through her guardian Eleanor Green |
Second Respondent |
IN THE MATTER OF G (CARE ORDER)
AND IN THE MATTER OF THE CHILDREN (JERSEY) LAW 2002
Advocate S. L. Brace for the Applicant.
Advocate E. Wakeling for the Mother.
Advocate C. R. Dutôt for the Guardian.
judgment
the deputy bailiff:
1. The Minister has applied for a care order under Article 24 of the Children (Jersey) Law 2002 ("the Law") in relation to the child. No disrespect is intended to the child by the nomenclature, which simply reflects that she is under the age of adulthood. The child is 14 and the daughter of the first Respondent, the mother. She was placed into the voluntary care of foster carers on 15th November 2012. An interim care order was granted on 8th May and she has continued to reside with her foster carers since then.
2. The Court sat on 29th May to determine whether the threshold criteria in Article 24(2) of the Law had been satisfied, so as to enable the Court at a later date to consider the welfare stage and to determine whether an order should be made, and if so what order that should be. Having heard evidence from Ms Sarah Jenner, the social worker, and submissions from counsel for the Minister and for the guardian, the Court announced its decision that the threshold criteria had been passed and we indicated that reasons would be given later. This judgment reflects those reasons.
3. Advocate Wakeling appeared for the mother who had indicated before the hearing that she intended to play no active part in it, and indeed she did not attend. As a result, Advocate Wakeling, who was acting on legal aid, held a watching brief only. It was made plain to her that she was free to leave the court, given the instructions she had received, if she so wished, but she stayed so that she could report to the mother the results of the hearing and recount what had taken place.
4. Article 24(2) of the Law provides:-
5. The Minister's case was that the child was suffering and was likely to suffer significant harm, and that harm was attributable to the care given, or likely to be given to her by the first Respondent, her mother, which fell short of the care which it would be reasonable to expect a parent to give.
6. The evidence from Ms Jenner suggested that between October 2010 and November 2012, a number of incidents had taken place which showed that the child had suffered and was at risk of physical harm, emotional harm and neglect. The Court also had before it in support a copy of the ABE interview of the child in May 2011 in relation to an allegation of assault on the child by the mother. The allegations of physical harm were of hair-pulling, face slapping, pushing and a gripping of the right upper arm. On one occasion the allegation against the mother was that she spat in the child's face.
7. The mother did not defend these claims, and we have proceeded on the basis that they are true. We have looked at the contents of the ABE interview, which testifies to a nasty assault by the mother, when drunk, on the child. Nonetheless, assuming all the matters stated to be true, we are doubtful whether conduct of this kind would amount to significant physical harm. In fairness to the social worker, she emphasised that the primary concern which she had was that it was emotional as opposed to physical harm which had been caused, and we can well see that physical incidents of the kind described could be, and in this case, are, part of the overall picture from which we conclude that the threshold criteria have been met. We consider, however, that had the physical harm allegations stood by themselves, they would probably not have achieved the threshold of "significant harm".
8. The evidence before us is that the child has gone missing from home on a significant number of occasions between October 2010 and November 2012. On 20th October 2010 the mother advised the police that the child was not welcome to return home, and as a result, the child who was then aged 12 was placed with a relative as a temporary measure. On 27th October 2010 the mother reported the child as missing, and when the police attended at her home, the mother was described as highly intoxicated and emotional. The following month, the mother called the police to say she was "having issues" with the child. On attendance, the police described the mother as being under the influence of alcohol and uncooperative.
9. On 25th January 2011 the child reported to the police that the previous evening she and her mother had had an argument and that the mother had been drinking. When the child returned home later in the evening, the house was in darkness and she was locked out. When the police were called as a result of the child attending upon a neighbour, the mother stated that she had grounded the child, who had refused to stay in saying she was not coming home, and the mother then went to bed.
10. On 23rd April 2011 the mother reported to the police that the child had been missing for three days. It is a surprise and of concern that a child aged 12 might be missing for that number of days without the authorities being notified. When the child was located, the mother did not respond to attempts by the duty childcare officer to contact her by telephone.
11. In June 2012, the mother again reported the child as missing. On attending at the address where the child was staying, the child stated that she had left the family home 8 days earlier because her mother had thrown her out. The child reported that she had slept in the garage for a couple of nights before being given accommodation at the address where she was located. During this 8 day period, the mother had not notified the authorities that her daughter had been missing. On attending the family home, police found the mother in a state described as "intoxicated" and she was "deemed ... unfit to care for a child".
12. The following month, the child called the police again to report that the mother would not let her home. As a result, the child was accommodated overnight in the Minister's care at Brig-y-Don.
13. Four days later, the mother reported the child as having been missing for the last three days. She had no idea where the child was.
14. Since the child has been accommodated with foster parents, the mother has failed to exercise parental responsibility in a number of ways - she has not attended or contributed to the Looked After Review or engaged with the Children's Service to agree care arrangements; she has not provided the child with personal belongings including her school uniform; she has not had any contact with the child since 15th February; she has not of course participated in the present proceedings.
15. Although the mother has not participated in the proceedings, she has released a statement to us made in February this year in which she disputes some of the matters which are raised in the social worker's report. She did not accept that her parenting had caused the child any harm, though she did feel that the child was beyond parental control. She said that she was battling with two conflicting feelings - on the one hand she wanted the child home because she is her daughter and on the other hand she was worried at the damage that the daughter might do whether to herself or to her, the mother. She denied she, the mother, had a problem with alcohol and she expressed the wish that she wanted her contact with her daughter to improve and their relationship to get better. In her statement, she generally placed the responsibility with the child for the problems which had arisen. It was for that reason that the mother's offer was made that a care order should be based upon the child being out of parental control rather than any harm being caused by a lack of care on the mother's part.
16. Both the social worker and the guardian resolutely opposed this view expressed by the mother. They both took the view that Article 24(2)(b)(ii) was irrelevant to the problems which had arisen, and that the harm or likelihood of harm suffered by the child was attributable to the deficient care given to her by her mother.
17. Although the threshold document makes it plain that the Minister was contending that threshold had been passed upon the basis of various incidents which had taken place since October 2010, the Court has also had before it a chronology going back to a month before the child's birth. The chronology shows that problems had been on-going over a longer period that that. We note for example that on 31st January 2004, there was a referral to the Children's Service from the child's school to the effect that the child, then aged 6, had arrived at school with a neighbour, stating that she had been kicked out of home the night before. The neighbour confirmed this. This is not an isolated example.
18. The Court has had the benefit of a report from Dr James Murray, a chartered clinical psychologist who has specialised in carrying out assessments of children and families in the areas of attachment, development, family functioning, residence and care proceedings. He describes the child as a relatively typical 14 year old girl, with no indications of any significant mental ill health in terms of depression, anxiety or any other psychiatric disorder. Her school attendance is good and her attainment consistent with her abilities. Her self-care and daily living skills are normal. Her peer relationships are good.
19. Her family relationships are described as poor with little to no meaningful contact with anyone in her birth family. Dr Murray then goes on to describe her relationship with her mother:-
"[The child's] relationship with her mother shows a long-standing pattern of conflict and multiple instances of inconsistent behaviour and rejection on [the mother's] part. [The child's] reaction to this, in my view, is to have developed a self-protective stance based on assuming that her mother will fail to care for her or meet her needs, and attempting to minimise the importance of the relationship with her mother. She does this by focusing her emotional energy and time on relationships with peers, and by avoiding thinking about or talking about her mother. This, in my view, is the major harm that has been caused by [the child's] past history.
This stance is rational and, in the short term, strongly protective against emotional distress.
However, there is a longer term risk that this kind of avoidant attachment style may become strongly embedded and cause [the child] to have difficulties with peer, romantic, or authority relationships: children who develop an avoidant attachment style are more likely to have difficulties in later life in terms of struggling to become and remain emotionally close with others, and not being able to access practical and emotional support from others."
20. The Court is satisfied that the matters referred to in paragraphs 8 to 14 above amount to significant emotional harm and that having regard to Dr Murray's report it is attributable to the mother's care falling short of the standard of care which it would be reasonable to expect a parent to give.
21. Unfortunately, the mother has a history of non-engagement with the Children's Service and indeed that is reflected in her non-engagement with the current proceedings in as much as she has not only failed to attend the application for an interim care order or the application for a final care order, but has also not participated in the assessments which have been directed by the Court to be carried out. As a result, those assessments have not been carried out.
22. The welfare stage of the present application by the Minister is to be determined on 28th June. It may be that at that stage some of the recommendations which Dr Murray makes will be given further consideration and it would be wrong at this stage therefore to express anything other than tentative views in that connection. However, we have had the opportunity of hearing evidence and reading a number of papers, and in addition, the child, very bravely, has been present in court for the hearing of both the interim care application and for the threshold hearing. We think it is likely, that at different times, the child will have very different emotions towards her mother - at times she will feel rejected; at times perhaps feel jealous of her eldest step-sister who is now back living with the mother after a time of living away; at times feeling in fear when her mother was under the influence of alcohol; at times feeling frustrated, bewildered and critical; and at times feeling part of her mother's family. All those feelings would be entirely natural. In due course, when she is older, the child may be able to understand in a more mature way the problems which her mother has faced. We think it is important to emphasise that point today that because at some point now or in the near future the child is likely to read this assessment of the circumstances which face her. As we indicated at the interim hearing, it seems to us to be important that the child appreciates two conclusions which this Court has reached:
(i) The child should not have had to put up with the treatment which she has suffered at her mother's hands during her life to date. In this context, her mother's behaviour has not been acceptable, and it is not the normal standard of behaviour which the law expects of parents. It is therefore not the child's fault that she is in the position she is in. We emphasise that point not least because of the evidence of the child's guardian who said that the child has been wrongly blamed all her life, having been told by her mother that she is badly behaved, difficult, unlovable and that everything is her fault. All the evidence before us suggests that that is not so.
(ii) That the mother may have behaved unacceptably and not have provided to the child the standard of care which the law expects a mother to provide is not a matter on which the mother is judged harshly. It may not even been her "fault". Article 24 of the Law does not require the Court to allocate fault as such, and we do not do so. Our focus is on whether the child has suffered or is likely to suffer significant harm and whether that harm or likelihood of harm can be attributed to the care given to the child by her parent which falls short of what is reasonable. Inevitably that exercise may involve criticism of what has been done, or not done as the case may be, but it does not involve the allocation of blame. That is potentially important for the on-going relationship between the mother and the child which at some point, if not now, may be important to both of them. The Court has had the benefit of being able to look at a chronology which includes the mother's family context, which shows that the mother's own upbringing was extremely difficult and that she too may have suffered emotional harm as a result of the conduct of those close to her, including her parents.
23. The Court has been told that since November 2012 the child has been placed with foster parents who have four daughters with a spread of ages between 5 and 19. In that environment, the child appears to be flourishing. The guardian describes her as a fun person, who is lovely to spend time with. It is clear that she is not out of control because she both understands and generally adheres to the rules which are explained to her in a way that makes sense, and in a nice way. The change in the behaviour of the child emphasises the risk of significant harm which existed in her previous environment.
24. We have had careful regard to the considerations set out by the Court of Appeal in the matter of F and G (No.2) [2010] JCA 051 at paragraphs 5-7 of that judgment. We think the emotional harm to which the child has been exposed and would be likely to be exposed, is considerable and noteworthy and falls within the ordinary meaning of the word "significant". We have in mind all the facts of the case, including those allegations in relation to physical harm in the context of assessing, in the round, whether the child has suffered or is likely to suffer emotional harm, and we accept for all the reasons we have given that the threshold criteria are therefore passed.
