Court of Appeal hears mother’s appeal against care and placement orders for two sisters

The Court of Appeal gave judgment on 29 July 2026 on a mother's appeal against care and placement orders made for her two young daughters, raising the question of whether the orders were proportionate.

Background

The Court of Appeal (Civil Division) gave judgment in Re F (Children: Placement Orders: Proportionality) [2026] EWCA Civ 990 on 29 July 2026. The panel was Lord Justice Edis, Lord Justice Peter Jackson and Lord Justice Dingemans. The appeal was heard on 7 July 2026. The children are referred to as D and Z, as in the judgment.

The appeal was from care and placement orders made by the Family Court on 7 May 2026 in respect of the two girls. Their mother appealed, with permission granted by Baker LJ. The children's father supported the appeal. The local authority and the Children's Guardian opposed it.

The Court of Appeal identified two unusual features. The parents and children are not British citizens and their immigration status is precarious, which makes the arrangements for the children's future harder to predict. The children have also always lived with their mother and are apparently thriving in her supervised care. Although the proceedings had continued for over a year, no one suggested removing them at any interim stage, so they are strongly attached to their mother and, to a lesser extent, to their father.

Children's services had been involved with the family since early 2023, after the mother made allegations of domestic abuse against the father. In May 2023 she said she had not been telling the truth. The parents' asylum claim was refused by the Home Office in 2024, and their appeal to the First-tier Tribunal was adjourned to await the outcome of the family proceedings.

The trial judge's decisions

At an earlier hearing the trial judge found serious flaws in the local authority's and the Guardian's adoption analysis. In particular, the advantages of placement with the mother, the immediate and lifelong impact of removal, and the comparison between realistic options had not been properly set out. Because adoption is a draconian order, and because the decision was finely balanced and difficult, the court could not approve the plan without that analysis. The case was adjourned for a further hearing on 6 and 7 May 2026.

In her final judgment on 7 May 2026 the judge accepted that removal would harm the children and would significantly disrupt a secure attachment to their mother. She was not persuaded that steps the mother had taken to separate from the father were genuine or protective. She concluded that her assessment of the risk, and of how it could be managed, remained the same, and that no protective measures could be effective without the mother's openness and honesty.

Sources

• F (Children: Placement Orders: Proportionality), Re [2026] EWCA Civ 990, Court of Appeal (Civil Division), 29 July 2026