Judge criticises fundamental errors in childcare case after earlier ruling ignored

Her Honour Judge Madeleine Reardon has highlighted “fundamental errors” made in the preparation and presentation of a childcare case, in which a previous judgment given by the court was “completely ignored”.

She said that in any case where a court has delivered judgment, particularly where findings have been made, the judgment will be the “starting point for future decision-making”.

Her Honour Judge Madeleine Reardon said she had made an interim care order (“ICO”) in proceedings concerning a newborn baby, “V”, on 24 March 2023, in which she gave an oral judgment.

In a further, written judgement she criticised the preparation of the childcare case by the local authority. She said: “Unfortunately this is not the only case that has been before me recently in which a previous judgment given by the court has been completely ignored.

“For example it is not unusual, following a fact-finding hearing, to see the local authority repeat in its final evidence allegations which were not found proved. The present case was simply a particularly striking example of the problem.”

Outlining the background to the case, the High Court judge said that the newborn baby (V)’s parents (M and F) are a couple. They have two older children, “W” (4) and “X” (2). W and X were the subject of lengthy public law proceedings, brought by a different local authority., the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

The outcome of the proceedings was that W and X were placed with a relative overseas under special guardianship orders.

HHJ Madeleine Reardon said: “I gave judgment at the end of the hearing, on 19 March 2021. In it I set out the findings I made on the disputed issues of fact and my conclusions about the evidence. I found some of the local authority’s threshold allegations proved, but not others. I accepted some of the parents’ criticisms of the LIFT assessment, but not all. Overall I found that the conclusions of that assessment were sound.”

She noted that in the course of the previous proceedings, M and F moved from Tower Hamlets to Newham. When LB Newham became aware of M’s third pregnancy, in early 2023, it requested the files from Tower Hamlets.

An application for an interim care order was issued on Wednesday 22 March 2023 and referred to HHJ Madeleine Reardon.

On this, she said: “I read the initial social work statement and the local authority’s interim threshold document on the day the proceedings were issued. It was immediately obvious that they presented a misleading impression of the history.”

She added: “It appears that the papers provided to Newham by Tower Hamlets were incomplete and did not include, in particular, the March 2021 judgment.”

The High Court judge found that the initial social work statement “purported to summarise the evidence before the court in the previous proceedings”.

In her written judgment, she included a table which compared some of the assertions contained in the social work statement filed in the proceedings to the finding in her judgment.

The information contained in the March 2021 judgment was available to all of the parties but was “not before the court at the ICO hearing”, said HHJ Madeleine Reardon.

Outlining what the implications could have been if the hearing had been listed before a different judge, she said: “At best, the court would have been presented with an unnecessarily conflicted and confusing picture. At worst, a decision of huge significance to V and his parents could have been taken on the basis of information that was simply wrong.”

Commenting on what needs to happen in the future, HHJ Madeleine Reardon said: "In any case where a court has delivered judgment, particularly where findings have been made, the judgment will be the starting point for future decision-making, and therefore any account of the background set out in a social work statement or other document should take the judgment as its primary source.

"There is no point in trawling through old documents to put together a history when the facts have already been determined, and to do so is likely to create a confusing and misleading picture."

She continued: "I recognise that the fact that an allegation has been made, even if it has not been found proved, may continue to be of relevance, and so there may be a need to refer to it in a subsequent document (the unproven sexual abuse allegations in this case provide a good example of such a situation, because although those allegations were not found proved, the fact that they were made was and is relevant to the nature of the parental relationship). However if that happens, the author of the document must make the status of the allegation clear."

Concluding, HHJ Madeleine Reardon stressed that her judgment is not “guidance”, noting that the relevant principles are “readily available from many, far more authoritative sources.”

Lottie Winson