Couple must share responsibility for daughter’s care with local authority

A couple can no longer have total parental responsibility for their disabled teenage daughter because of concerns about their attitude to social services staff, a family court judge has ruled.

Judge Lynn Roberts has made a care order which means that the couple must share parental responsibility with a local authority in order to ensure that the youngster’s welfare needs are met.

The judge said the couple had an “entrenched mistrust” and a “lack of respect” and appeared to assume that no “non-medical professional” involved with their daughter was to be trusted.

She said the couple had lost focus on what was best for their daughter and she said she thought that professionals involved had at times been “effectively paralysed”.

Judge Roberts analysed the case at a private hearing in a family court in Chelmsford, Essex, earlier this year – and detail has emerged in a ruling published on a website.

The judge has described the case as “unusual” and said at one stage she had asked an independent social worker to try to mediate between the couple and council staff.

She has not identified the family but said the local authority involved was Essex County Council – which had asked for the making of a care order.

Judge Roberts said the girl had “complex medical, physical and psychological” difficulties.

The judge said the question she had to decide was whether a care order was needed to allow the council to “share parental responsibility” with the girl’s parents “in order to ensure that her welfare needs are met”.

She concluded that a care order was necessary.

The judge said the girl’s father had given evidence at the hearing – and she said his answers to questions had been “disingenuous”.

“(He) is very protective of (his daughter) for understandable reasons,” said Judge Roberts.

“He considers that he has had to fight hard to get her the services she requires.

“However, he is now unable to allow those services to do their work fully to meet (his daughter’s) interests.

“(His wife) chooses not to or is unable to bring him to a different position.

“What is likely to have started out as helpful to (the girl), as I understand that many parents of disabled children struggle initially to get the help needed, has now become an entrenched mistrust of the services and lack of respect for the professionals involved … and therefore a loss of focus of what is really important for (the girl).”

Judge Roberts said the couple also “regularly and frequently” threatened to sue professionals involved.

“It is an unfortunate part of this case,” said the judge. “It is not in (the girl’s) interests for there to be a litigious approach and it has in effect, in my judgment, effectively paralysed the professionals from time to time, which has to be against (the girl’s) interests.”

The judge added: “It is (the girl’s) welfare which concerns me most. She has particular needs which the local authority and the NHS have had difficulty identifying in the past and therefore have not always been able to meet.”

She went on: “I am sure that (the girl) needs to be subject to a care order. I consider this to be a proportionate response to the difficulties as I consider that it is very likely that without a care order in place, which will give the local authority shared parental responsibility, the professionals will continue to be prevented from doing their jobs properly to (the girl’s) detriment.”

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