The system is failing children put up for adoption

Grooming scandals and the inept process-driven world of adoption exposed in Re K (A Child: Post Adoption Placement Breakdown) [2012] EWHC B9 (Fam) show that child protection services remain systemically flawed.

The case involved the removal of four-year-old 'Katie' from her poor parenting, mentally disordered mother and five siblings. She was placed in foster care for more than a year. Plans to have her adopted by middle aged, middle class roman catholic parents failed. She ended up in a residential school where, at 14, she suffered her most serious harm: rape by an acquaintance on one of her frequent absconsions.

According to the ruling, the pre-adoption report said Katie needed 'a permanent family who can offer her stability and unconditional love'. To maximise her chances, the Coventry adoption social worker presented Katie in glowing terms, preferring her foster carers' opinion that she was 'open and truthful' to the guardian's that she was 'sly and devious at times', and 'has taken things that do not belong to her'.

The adoption panel were unaware that Katie had regularly witnessed her mother's self - harm, and her older sister's sexual abuse, and possibly her own. Details were only retrieved from her social work files four years later. In their application her parents stated they '[did] not feel able to take a child who has been sexually abused', and admitted they would not have adopted Katie.

They were only approved to adopt a child with 'no major emotional problems'. Yet Katie, presented as 'indiscriminate in her relations with adults', 'extremely needy', and in need of 'a good level of support following placement'.

Secure attachments

Despite this, Katie's psychological assessment was glowing, stating she 'could make secure attachments'. But it was written by the psychologist advising her foster parents, who had never met Katie. A proper assessment was essential to ensure Katie was capable of forming the permanent attachments needed for a successful adoption.

Within three months of the final adoption order, following a positive placement report, Katie by then 7, was suspended from school for downloading pornography. Three years later she was taking things, self-harming, absconding from home day and night, and blaming her mother for not being able to live with her birth family.

It was only when Katie was 11 that the post-adoption support team arranged a consultation with the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), accessed Katie's social work files to begin her life story work, and provided parenting strategies. This only served to decrease her parents' warmth and empathy, so that they complained this was not what they 'signed up for'.

CAMHS's diagnosis of a 'huge attachment disorder', ought to have been obvious to an informed observer, let alone an adoption support team. CAMHS commenced art therapy, and advised Katie's parents to change their parenting style. A family and adolescent support services worker, initially ignorant of attachment disorders, worked with Katie. This support proved ineffective.

The court expert was to explain why. Katie was 'yearning to be accepted and nurtured for herself'. Her parents' 'focus on high achievement'¦ [did] not equip them easily to accept Katie unconditionally'. They trusted their own high achieving teenage daughters, which left Katie feeling a failure, and not part of the family. The report to the adoption panel had prophetically stated: 'She would benefit from being in a home where she does not have to compete for attention'. This had not been heeded. However with therapy, common sense and proper support, costing far less than Katie's residential school, Katie could still have remained part of her new family and thrived.

Residential school

Instead social services had held a professional meeting and noted: 'professionals have offered as much as they can. Nothing else seems to have worked, only option is bring her into care'. The parents were declared 'high risk abusive parents', and it was arranged for Katie to be moved to a residential school over 100 miles away.

The parents knew nothing of these intentions, nor the effect of the subsequent care conference, despite working together to safeguard children guidance, and the importance to Katie, of maintaining her relationship with her parents.

Before Katie had been due to be driven by her parents, she absconded, was found by the police, who in breach of their promise not to, drove Katie in the middle of the night to her residential school. Katie complained her father had assaulted her, (he had grabbed her in restraint for her own protection, and to guide her to his car). Both parents were arrested, but never charged.

Social services maintained a zero tolerance to restraint, advising her parents to let Katie abscond, wait 30 minutes, and ring the police. This, together with advice not to show anger, paradoxically resulted in Katie assuming her parents did not care, escalating her bad behaviour. By contrast restraint was allowed and used in her residential school by strangers.

Within a year of being in the childrens' home Katie had absconded six times, been raped by an acquaintance, been physically restrained, spent a night in the police cells after an assault on a carer and been fitted with a contraceptive implant, without her parents' knowledge. Katie was not yet 15.

Although at the final hearing the parents conceded the care application, the judge insisted they fully contest. And while he, and the expert agreed, that the threshold criteria was satisfied, Katie had suffered significant harm, and was beyond parental control, this was not due to her parents 'punitive regime'. In any event they agreed with judicial guidelines, that apportioning blame is not generally in a child's best interest.

As a care order could only worsen the parents' relationship with the social services, and force them to say goodbye, and have 'a very negative impact on Katie', the judge preferred wardship, but felt restricted by section 100(2)(b) of the Children Act 1989, which appears to exclude such orders where a child is accommodated, or subject to a care order.

The Ministry of Justice's Practice Direction 12 D, however, is far less restrictive. It states wardship should not be commenced unless it is clear that the issues concerning the child cannot be resolved under the Children Act 1989. Thus it allows wardship, whenever there is no other means of satisfactorily resolving a care dispute, regardless of the current status of the child. Wardship therefore, could and should allow 'a legal framework which kept all parties on equal terms', as it did in K Children [2012] EWHC, where it achieved the best outcomes for a family with three severely disabled children.

Human rights arguments

Had Katie's parents applied for a wardship order, they would not need leave, and Katie might still be part of her familynstead, her parents were replaced by an independent reviewing officer '“ an executive of the social services, whose only check on their employers' care of Katie is to refer them to CAFCASS for breach of Katie's human rights. And to date no action has been taken against any authority for such breach.

A&S v Lancashire County Council [2012] EWHC 1689 (Fam) saw a local authority sued for breach of two boys' articles 3, 6 and 8 rights, in forcing them to endure 77 and 96 different placements and abuse. Their independent reporting officer blamed a tick-box culture, non-existent supervision, inadequate training and a 200 caseload.

Such freestanding human rights actions are often overlooked by parents and children, because of a belief that there is a high threshold for engagement. But while the ECHR appears subsumed by the need to act in a child's best interest, this interest is often best served by the maintenance of the family unit, and on such analysis, most interference by the state may be deemed substantial.

Katie's parents could have sought a remedy for breaches of their, and Katie's article 8 rights, due to the social services procedural unfairness and the removal of Katie into care. And clever injunctive use of article 8 might ensure Katie's future care was fit for purpose.

We will never know what happened to Katie, nor of the thousands in similar positions, who due to their attachment disorders 'use a compulsively promiscuous strategy to avoid genuine intimacy'. Hale LJ has stated that: 'If the state is to interfere in the child's right to respect for his family life, it has a duty to use its best endeavours to make good what it has taken away'. It did neither for Katie, nor for many missing or abused in care.