Balancing emotional risk

In re M (children) (care order: removal) CA TLR 11 November

In care proceedings, the local authority had failed to remove the three of the parents’ four children most at risk, because two had refused to go and one, having gone, had absconded. That failure inevitably diminished the strength of the local authority’s case for opposing the return of the youngest child, R, who was two years old. Nevertheless the judge, supported by the guardian, had refused the parents’ application for R’s return and had continued the interim care order.