The Court of Appeal (CoA) reaffirmed that adoption is a last resort and courts must conduct a rigorous proportionality analysis when considering placement orders. Where a child is thriving with a parent who has support needs, the Court must explore all less extreme options before approving a permanent separation.
Facts:
The case concerns a 57-year-old Japanese mother, a professional and financially stable national, who is currently living and working in the UK with no local family support. Following the tragic death of her husband in 2015, she decided to have a child via assisted conception overseas, resulting in the birth of L in 2023.
The Local Authority (LA) became involved immediately after L’s birth due to concerns from hospital staff that the mother required prompting with basic care. An assessment by an independent social worker (ISW), completed when L was five days old, identified that his mother would benefit from additional support to manage and meet his needs. From the age of two weeks until the final orders at 21 months, the mother and L lived in a series of three continuous residential placements under voluntary Section 20 arrangements.
The LA sought a care order in August 2024 and a placement order (for adoption) in March 2025. In April 2025, the LA applied for an interim care order (ICO) with a plan for separation and placement, one which encompassed early permanent prospective adopters. The final hearing took place in August 2025 before Recorder Magennis, who found that the threshold for intervention was met based on the likelihood of future significant physical and emotional harm, even though L was a thriving child who had suffered no actual harm and shared a loving bond with his mother.
The evidence against the mother centred on her lack of insight into safety risks (e.g., falls, choking hazards), her opposition to professional guidance, and her occasional emotional outbursts or aggression towards social workers and foster carers, which experts suggested were partly due to cultural factors and the stress of the proceedings.
The Recorder subsequently made care and placement orders, leading to L’s immediate separation from his mother. The mother appealed.
Decision:
The CoA set aside the care order and the placement order and remitted the case to the High Court. The main reason was the Recorder’s failure to adhere to the strict legal principles of necessity and proportionality in family law, particularly the “nothing else will do” test for adoption. The core of the judgement was that the Recorder had failed to correctly apply the principle that adoption is the order of last resort, as mandated by the Supreme Court in Re B and the Strasbourg Court in Y v UK.
Lord Justice Jackson concluded that the mother’s parental deficiencies—primarily involving a lack of insight into safety risks and emotional dysregulation—were not of a sufficient ‘nature and degree’ to justify the termination of the parent/child relationship. The mother’s parenting was within the range of “the eccentric, the barely adequate and the inconsistent” that society must tolerate.
Implications:
This case reinforces the Re B principle that adoption is a ‘draconian step’ and the remedy of last resort where ‘nothing else will do’. The Court emphasised that simply finding a risk of significant harm is not sufficient to justify adoption, as the courts must demonstrate that the proposed measure is necessary and proportionate to that risk. The case makes it clear that courts cannot take the “easiest” or most obvious option (adoption) if less intrusive, support-based options exist.
This judgement requires courts to conduct a thorough, realistic assessment of mitigation strategies and alternative solutions before severing family ties. This means actively exploring and explaining why measures such as supervision orders, nursery placements, and community support are insufficient to manage the risk. The Recorder’s simple acceptance of the ISW’s view that 24/7 support was needed was deemed insufficient.
The case highlights the critical importance of a nuanced approach to non-UK nationals and the interpretation of their style of parenting behaviour. The ruling serves as a strong caution against conflating a parent’s cultural communication style or emotional response to proceedings (especially high-stress proceedings with a power imbalance) with an inherent “lack of insight” into their child’s welfare.
