A care order has been overturned after the Court of Appeal found a recorder had over-estimated the benefit of parental bonds and had made an order with “no workable plan” for a child’s future.
Allowing the local authority’s appeal in L (A Child: Placement and Contact Orders), Lord Justice Peter Jackson also said Recorder Calway had under-estimated his power to secure sibling contact, and had made an “error of approach” in making the care order rather than a placement order sought by the local authority.
The recorder’s judgment had described “forever family and stability” as “a benefit rather than a need”. But two years old was a “crucial development age” and the child needed a home and family to grow up in, the judge ruled.
The placement order was sought in September 2025 for ‘A’, a girl then aged 14 months old and who had been in foster care for three months. Her family had, according to a psychologist’s report, “a history of chronic domestic violence, paternal substance misuse, neglect and poor home conditions, inconsistent and unsafe parental care, repeated separations and instability, unaddressed trauma, parental ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder], and two children with ASD [autism spectrum disorder]”.
The recorder refused the placement order because he was not satisfied that relationships with her parents and four elder brothers would be retained, Judge Jackson said. But this led to “an outcome that none of the parties had promoted and that the court had consequently not investigated or analysed”.
“No discernible weight was given to A’s most pressing need, which was to have a home of her own for her childhood and beyond,” he said, adding the recorder had “underestimated his own power to secure the benefits of sibling contact”.
A placement order in combination with a contact order was the only outcome that could provide for A’s welfare throughout her life, the judge ruled.
The judge said the recorder had approached his task with humility and understanding and had made care orders for the four boys (then aged between seven and 13, all currently in foster care) that were “firmly rooted in the evidence”. But, in A’s case, “the welfare analysis went awry, both in substance and in structure”.
Her need for “a home and a family to grow up in” was identified by all the professional witnesses, and there was no reason to undervalue it. But the recorder’s judgment contained “only a brief reference to ‘a forever family and stability’, describing it as a benefit rather than a need”. There was also “no robust assessment of how long-term fostering could meet A’s need for permanence”.
The recorder had not considered “the whole range of his powers” about contact orders, and arrived at “a false dichotomy between the importance of family bonds and the benefits of adoption, with one being found to outweigh the other”. But, Judge Jackson said, the court was not “confined to an ‘either/or’ choice”.
It was “an error of approach to have settled on a care order…before considering the application for a placement order”, said the ruling, agreed with by Lord Justice Bean and Lady Justice King.
The history of the case, said the judge, began in 2022, when police at a road accident found the parents and four children in a car with cannabis and £30,000 worth of cocaine. Later that year, following a number of call-outs for domestic abuse incidents, the father was arrested for assaulting the mother and then repeatedly breached bail by contacting her and the children.
In March 2023 the mother, who the judge said “was considered to lack insight”, went into a refuge with her children, but returned to the family home in August. ‘A’ was born the following June and proceedings were immediately issued in her case.
In January 2024, Judge Cope made a six-month supervision order, but less than two months later the father was arrested for beating the family dog and then for assaulting the mother.
The children were taken into foster care in May 2025. The mother sought to appeal, claiming she had separated from the father, but this was refused and the parents continued thereafter to present as a couple.
The father was convicted of drug offences in March 2026 and is currently serving a three-year sentence.
L (A Child: Placement and Contact Orders), Re [2026] EWCA Civ 639
