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15th Nov 2024 | Cases
Simon Miller was instructed by Birmingham Children’s Trust for the First Respondent in S v Birmingham City Council & Ors [2024] EWFC 244 (B); an application by Mother to reopen findings in care proceedings that were concluded in 2023, on the grounds that she was unable to attend court, due to the absence of an intermediary.
The Mother’s case was that the threshold findings and welfare judgment in March 2023 should be reopened, primarily because of fresh evidence and secondly, procedural irregularity and a breach of Article 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998.
The local authority and children’s guardian argued that there were no solid grounds for revisiting the court’s findings in March 2023, either in respect of threshold or welfare. That, in essence, this was an appeal out of time. There had been no application to discharge the care order, revoke the placement order or appeal the judgment.
The court did not accept the Mother’s argument that without an intermediary she did not feel able to attend the final hearing at all. The court found that by her own choice she had disengaged from the process sometime before the final hearing, including engagement with professionals, and by her own choice became unrepresented and ceased having contact with her own children.
As to the relevance of the additional evidence by way of the intermediary’s assessment, the court was not persuaded, in the circumstances of this case, that the evidence would result in the court making any different finding from that which it did. Application dismissed.