Hayley Trim's Analysis: Difficult decisions

I wrote an article which appears in October's Family Law ([2011] Fam Law 1110) regarding a case where foster carers applied to adopt two children disrupting the introductions to adopters which had all but concluded. The children had been with the foster carers for almost all of their young lives the local authority having been very slow in arranging for their placement for adoption (Coventry City Council v O (Adoption) [2011] EWCA Civ 729).

The Court of Appeal held that the judge should not have granted an injunction which halted the removal of the children from the foster carers to the adopters. However before the Court gave judgment the adopters withdrew their candidacy and an independent social worker reported that although the children had secure attachments to the foster parents there were concerns about the foster parents and the foster father in particular. Those concerns included a past conviction for violence but more particularly his...

Read the full article here.