Re F (Children: Placement Orders: Proportionality): Court of Appeal quashes adoption orders

The Court of Appeal has overturned care and placement orders made in respect of two young sisters, finding that the Family Court's welfare and proportionality assessment fell short of the strict threshold required before permanently severing children from their birth family, notwithstanding findings of domestic abuse, inflicted injury and sustained parental dishonesty.

The judgement, handed down on 29 July 2026 by Lord Justice Peter Jackson, with whom Lord Justice Dingemans and Lord Justice Edis agreed, allows a mother's appeal against orders made by Her Honour Judge Scannell in the Family Court at Cardiff in May 2026. The case concerned two girls, D, aged four and a half, and Z, aged one and a half, who had lived throughout the proceedings in their mother's care under supervision and were, on the evidence, thriving and securely attached to her.

The background included a documented history of domestic abuse by the father against the mother, including an assault witnessed by the elder child and an earlier incident of non-fatal strangulation, alongside unexplained bruising injuries to the younger child in March 2025 which the judge found had been inflicted by one or both parents. The trial judge also found extensive dishonesty by both parents towards professionals, the courts, the Home Office and the immigration tribunal, in a case complicated throughout by the family's precarious asylum status. Threshold was found to be met in November 2025, and after the parents failed to demonstrate insight during a subsequent assessment period, the local authority's plan moved from possible rehabilitation to adoption, a course supported by the children's guardian.

The Court of Appeal rejected the mother's procedural challenge to the way the Family Court had structured its decision across three separate hearings and judgements, finding no serious unfairness even though it would have been preferable for the judge to deliver a single welfare judgement rather than signalling strong conclusions about risk at an intermediate stage.

However, the court upheld the substantive challenge to proportionality. Lord Justice Jackson emphasised that severing the relationship between parent and child is permissible only where nothing else will do, and that the trial judge's findings of risk, however well supported by the evidence, could not alone justify adoption without a rigorous and clearly reasoned assessment of the likely consequences of any future harm and the extent to which protective measures might reduce or manage it. Reviewing the judgements, the appellate court found only limited engagement with what future harm might actually look like for these particular children, and no meaningful consideration of alternatives such as a supervision order, a Domestic Abuse Protection Order, or continued voluntary support from local authority services, beyond a conclusion that any measure requiring the mother's honesty would be ineffective given her established pattern of concealment.

The court concluded that this gap in reasoning meant the decision did not satisfy the exacting standard required for adoption, notwithstanding the deference ordinarily owed to a trial judge who had heard extensive evidence over a year of proceedings. The care and placement orders were set aside, reviving the earlier interim care orders, with the unappealed threshold findings preserved. The matter was remitted to the Family Court for a fresh welfare determination, to be case managed by the Family Presiding Judge.

In a concurring judgement, Lord Justice Dingemans, Senior President of Tribunals, highlighted the importance of coordination between the Family Court and the immigration tribunal system in cases where a parent's right to remain in the UK may bear on the welfare analysis, referencing existing protocols governing communication between the two jurisdictions.