I don't think the media can be accused of "jumping on the case".
Reading through the judges actual written submissions reveals that East Sussex have done a huge disservice to the social care profession. I would struggle to imagine how the assersions of the likes of John Hemmings MP and even Fathers4Justice can be easily opposed because of this judgement. Somehow East Sussex Social Services managed to create an appeal case that gave credence to those convinced there is some kind of "forced adoption policy" land those concerned with an alledged conspiracy against fathers being committed by the family courts.
Some choice extracts from the actual judgements;
(Lord Justice Wall)
Furthermore, as this judgment will attempt to demonstrate, section 24 of the 2002 Act, properly applied and implemented, is HRA 1998 and ECHR compliant. What has happened in this case is that there has been a travesty of good practice which the 2002 Act happens to permit. In my judgment, the answer to this case is not to allow the appeal, but for this court to ensure, in so far as it can, that the conduct of this local authority is not repeated elsewhere.
...
(Lord Justice Thorpe)
If the council elects not to explain and justify, it has both no prospect of shifting the judge's criticisms and also the risk that we will be more trenchant in condemnation.
(Lord Justice Thorpe)
That this appellant (the father) has suffered a manifest injustice can hardly be disputed. That others may suffer similarly in future is an evident risk. Can justice be done to the appellant by this court and can others be safeguarded in the future by a liberal construction of Section 24?
(Lord Justice Thorpe)
Not only did the council owe a duty to the appellant and to the child but also, in my judgment, to the prospective adopters. Once the appellant put himself forward and sought the revocation of the placement order, to press forward on the road to placement without warning the prospective adopters that their legitimate expectations might never be realised was an abuse of their trust.
(Lord Justice Wall)
Furthermore, as I hope to demonstrate later, any local authority / adoption agency seeking to repeat this authority's behaviour will almost certainly find itself the subject of an application for judicial review. That is not something, I hope, that most local authorities / adoption agencies would relish, particularly if any placement of a child was found by the Administrative Court to be unlawful.
(Lod Justice Wall - Of the conduct of the Local Authority/adoption agency in this case)
Over the period during which this judgment has been reserved, I have re-read the papers and reflected on the agency's conduct. In the event, I have come to the conclusion that the only word I can use to describe it is "disgraceful". That is not a word I use lightly.
...
During the course of argument, we gave counsel for the agency every opportunity to defend and justify its conduct. In my judgment, she not only failed to do so: worse, she did not appear to think the exercise necessary.
...
And the worst bit comes from Lord Justice Wall - the very bit that explains just how much damage this case has inflicted on all social workers in the UK.
(Lord Justice Wall)
In my judgment, the conduct of the agency in this case demonstrates a profound if not total misunderstanding of its functions under the 2002 Act. Moreover – and this I find particularly dispiriting - it provides useful ammunition for those who criticise the Family Justice System for administering "secret" justice, and who attack social workers as a group for their arrogance and the manner in which they abuse their functions by both removing children from their parents unlawfully, and by stifling legitimate parental responses.
....
Parliament has given the social work profession wide powers. They must not abuse them. Social workers must also remember that, charged as they are under the Children Act 1989 and under the 2002 Act with promoting the best interests of children, the ultimate arbiter of what is in the best interests of the child is the court. This is not judicial empire-building: it is the division of responsibility which Parliament has laid down. It must be respected.
...
(about the process of adoption)
In my judgment, therefore, a fair process is essential. Justice must not only be done but be seen to be done. This is even more important in cases involving children, which are heard in private. In the instant case, the agency, I am satisfied, quite deliberately set out to prevent the father from being heard. No other inference can be drawn from its conduct. The fact that its workers may have genuinely believed that in so doing they were acting in the best interests of the child concerned is, in my judgment, at best irrelevant and at worst dangerous. The conduct of the agency in the instant case was an abuse of power, and wholly unacceptable.
...
I add only, by way of introduction, that what follows is not an exercise in "local authority bashing": it is a further endeavour to get across the message that bad practice is unacceptable in Family Justice, particularly when it relates to the welfare of children and where the consequence is that parents are denied the right to have their cases heard.
...
In his summing-up of his part of the judgement, Lord Justice Wall pretty munch places every social services department on notice;
I find it very dispiriting, some 16 and a half years after the implementation of the Children Act 1989 and some time after the implementation of the 2002 Act, that this court is still having to remind local authorities of the basic principles underlying the legislation. This is by no means the first time that this court has been critical of the conduct of a local authority although, speaking for myself, the behaviour of the agency in the instant case is about the worst I have ever encountered in a career now spanning nearly 40 years.
The first point about which the social workers and the agency's lawyers in the instant case need to be reminded is that when dealing with parents, however inadequate or abusive, they are dealing with human beings who have both feelings and rights. I do not propose to identify any of the individual social workers in the present case by name. In my judgment, the failings demonstrated in this case are in principle failings of management. The social workers in question appear, in my judgment, not only to have been inadequately managed; they do not appear to have been properly trained. Worse than that, they do not appear to see the need for good management. It is, I think, the arrogance of the agency's behaviour in this case which is its most shocking aspect.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The judgement has now, through the auspices of Mark Potter, President of the Family Courts Division, been sent to every established Family Court judge for their information.
It isn't sufficient to blame the Daily Mail for reporting the story (as did The Times.) If anything those two newspapers pulled their punches with this - probably fearing their readers wouldn't be too interested in all the gory details of the judgement.
It hasn't been a good 12 months for staff in the childcare arena; first the hopeless handling of the Fran Lyon case, the continuing embarrassment of the Websters' appeal, the hopeless unprofessionalism of the Baby G case in Nottingham, the scandal of Wakefield, the recording of social workers that ended up on YouTube, the jailing of Prisoner X, the evolving child-rape gangs issue in West Yorkshire, the Charles Taylor business and finally...this.
You would have thought that the likes of East Sussex would be on the alert to this kind of behaviour, certainly in the current climate. But, no, once again the worst of the profession has been paraded for all to see - and worse yet it is obvious that the Appeal Court is taking a dim view of some less-than-correct behaviour by some Local Authorities.
It would be nice to get through six months without some new scandal or revelation hitting the newstands. The likes of Hemmings et al must be rubbing their hands in glea over this judgement. As a "body corporate" the activities of East Sussex Social Services should be condemned in nojthing less than the most vigorous fashion; they've let everyone down in the worst imaginable way.