A Newport Family Court judgment
An important (albeit partially redacted) judgment in the case of Re C (A Child) (Care Proceedings Withdrawal) [2024] EWFC 227 (B) has been published. The Transparency Project has released an excellent summary of this (almost impossible to summarise) judgment in its latest Family Court Reporting Watch Roundup (scroll down to the ‘NEW JUDGMENTS OF INTEREST’ section).
The judgment is excellent in its meticulous analysis of the truly deplorable actions of the relevant local authority and the police force, albeit that one might have hoped for a greater expression of judicial outrage: outrage at the consequent and egregious interference with the fundamental human rights that the grandparents and the disabled child experienced.
A separate judgment (C (A Child) (Care Proceedings – Publication of Judgment), Re [2024] EWFC 228 (B)) considered the question of whether the local authority and the police force should be named. As one would expect, the local authority, the police force and the child’s guardian opposed naming. In relation to the guardian, this is unsurprising, since there was little obvious benefit for the child in having these bodies named (although it is unclear what tangible harm would result if the bodies were named).
The grandparents both asked that the local authority and the police force be named but the court decided that they should simply be referred to as ‘a Local Authority in Wales and a Police Force in Wales’.
Well and good – but it is a decision that will, objectively, mean that this truly damning critique of the dreadful actions of a Welsh local authority and a Welsh police force is likely to have ‘zero’ impact – in terms of addressing ‘the lack of supervision; lack of appropriate management; lack of awareness of the most basic of legal principles and lack of awareness of the family justice system and procedures’. And, that if any families living within their areas experience equally shocking mistreatment – no one will be able to say “this is not the first time”.
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Photograph of ‘Gwanwyn Dwyfor’ by Richard Jones -@lluniaurich
Posted 3 September 2024