| ADOPTION — Adoption order — Arrangements for adoption — Child placed for adoption under placement order — Prospective adopters applying for adoption order — Natural parents seeking leave to oppose making of order — Whether welfare of child paramount consideration — Adoption and Children Act 2002, ss 1(1), 47(5)(7)
In re P (A Child) (Adoption Proceedings)
CA: Thorpe, Wall LJJ and Hedley J: 27 June 2007
A court’s decision whether or not to grant leave to a parent to oppose the making of an adoption order, pursuant to s 47(5) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, was “a decision relating to the adoption of a child” within the meaning of s 1(1) of the 2002 Act. Therefore, by s 1(2) of the Act, the paramount consideration of the court was the child’s welfare.
The Court of Appeal so held in a reserved judgment in dismissing an appeal brought by the father of S, against the decision of Judge Corrie sitting as a High Court judge in the Oxford District Registry on 4 April 2007 whereby, in adoption proceedings issued by S’s prospective adopters, he refused the parents’ application for leave to oppose the making of an adoption order.
S was removed from her parents’ care by means of an emergency protection order and a care order was made following a fully contested hearing. The local authority’s care plan was for S to be adopted by strangers. The judge made a placement order under s 21 of the 2002 Act placing S for adoption with the prospective adopters, who subsequently applied for an adoption order. S’s natural parents applied, pursuant to s 47(5) of the Act, for leave to oppose the making of the order.
WALL LJ, delivering the judgment of the court, said that this was the first case to reach the Court of Appeal in which the “leave” provisions in s 47 of the 2002 Act fell to be considered. On the application for leave to defend the adoption proceedings, the parents’ case was that they both, but in particular the father, had addressed all the deficiencies in their lives and in their parenting of S identified by the judge in the care and placement order proceedings. The parents asserted that there had been “a change in circumstances since the placement order was made” within s 47(7) of the 2002 Act sufficient for the judge to give them leave to defend the proceedings. The judge rejected their application for two reasons. First he was not satisfied that there had been a sufficient change in their circumstances to cross the leave threshold. Alternatively, even if he was wrong, he held that S’s welfare, which he found to be his paramount consideration, required her to be adopted. For the father, Miss Platt challenged both limbs of the judge’s conclusion and submitted that the judge had in any event been wrong to hold that S’s welfare was the court’s paramount consideration on an application for leave to defend adoption proceedings. Their Lordships were of the view that the judicial decision whether or not to give leave to a parent to defend adoption proceedings under s 47(5) was “a decision relating to the adoption of a child” within the meaning of s 1(1) of the 2002 Act and that, accordingly, it was governed by s 1 of the 2002 Act. In their Lordships’ judgment, analysis of the statutory language in ss 1 and 47 led to the conclusion that an application for leave to defend adoption proceedings under s 47(5) involved a two-stage process. First, the court had to be satisfied that there had been a change in circumstances within s 47(7). If there had been no change, that was the end of the matter. If, however, there had been a change then the door to the exercise of a judicial discretion was opened, and the decision whether or not to grant leave was governed by s 1 of the 2002 Act. In other words, pursuant to s 1(2), “the paramount consideration of the court … must be the child’s welfare, throughout his life”. |
Appearances: Eleanor Platt QC and Andrew Pote (Wilsons, Oxford) for the father; Piers Pressdee (Oxfordshire County Council and Darbys, Oxford) for the local authority and the adoption agency; Jonathan Sampson (Whetter Duckworth Fowler, Oxford) for the mother; Simon Miller (Challenor Gardiner, Oxford) for the guardian.
|
