The Family Court adjourned a care case fact-finding hearing for the third time after late-disclosed foster care logs and hospital records revealed further medical investigations, and examined Medway Council's information sharing.
Key facts
- Who: Children, parents and others involved in care proceedings, and local authorities, in the context of this judgment
- From: 9 October 2026 (judgment date)
- Source: Medway Council v MA & Ors [2026] EWFC 293
In Medway Council v MA & Ors [2026] EWFC 293, handed down on 9 October 2026, Michael Jones KC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge in the Family Court at Canterbury, explained why a fact-finding hearing had to be adjourned for the third time before evidence was heard. The children are referred to as B and L, as in the judgment.
Background
Medway Council applied for care orders on 16 December 2024. B was then aged 3 months and L 15 months. Both are in foster care. The proceedings began after B was taken to hospital in December 2024 and investigations found a displaced fracture to the left radius, a rib fracture and multiple skull fractures. Clinicians considered the injuries indicative of inflicted injury. The mother had earlier taken B to hospital in November 2024 after a reported accidental fall. The local authority does not challenge that account.
The question
The judge considered why the hearing could not go ahead and what had gone wrong with information sharing. He began from the principle in the Children Act 1989 that delay is likely to prejudice a child's welfare. Care proceedings must be concluded within 26 weeks under section 32(1)(a)(ii), although the limit can be extended in certain situations. This fact-finding hearing was listed to start in week 100.
The decision and reasons
The hearing was adjourned. The next listing will be the fourth attempt at a fact-finding hearing.
After a reading day and a day dealing with outstanding matters, the hearing began on Monday 21 September 2026. Over the preceding weekend, lawyers for the mother and for SN, the intervenor, had reviewed a 1,888-page bundle of family time and foster care logs. The local authority had served the bundle the week before. The logs showed that B had received further medical attention during 2025. This included a referral to paediatrics because of slow healing of her forearm fracture, a full examination, an ophthalmology referral and a later x-ray. The hospital records in the bundle stopped at December 2024.
The judge directed urgent updating records. More than 300 pages of hospital records and further imaging arrived the next day. They showed a referral for genetic testing to try to identify whether neurofibromatosis was present. The experts had reported without these records. The geneticist, Professor Saggar, had not known of the genetic testing referral, and the radiologist, Dr Olsen, had not known of the later x-rays. The judge said it would not have been fair to Dr Olsen, or to the counsel cross-examining him, to start his evidence that afternoon. The hearing could not proceed.
He directed statements from senior council staff and the social worker. The council accepted serious errors and significant delay in disclosing foster carer records and medical information. The judge said that other parties not spotting the entries did not absolve the local authority. He also said it would not be fair to expect a parent in care proceedings to recognise the significance of medical issues in such a complex case.
The judge recorded 15 hearings before seven judges, and said the continuing delay was "clearly inimical" to the children's welfare. He had earlier said he would consider costs if the hearing had to be adjourned because of the local authority's failings.
What this means for people involved in care proceedings
The judgment records that this case had already run well beyond the 26-week timetable, and that the latest adjournment followed late and missing medical records. It also records that the experts' reports had been prepared without the later records and imaging. The judge restated that delay is likely to prejudice a child's welfare. Anyone involved in care proceedings who has questions about disclosure or the timetable should get legal advice before any deadline passes.
Sources
- Medway Council v MA & Ors [2026] EWFC 293, Family Court, 9 October 2026: https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewfc/2026/293