Justice Keehan's judgment in Northamptonshire County Council v AS and Ors (Rev 1) [2015] is likely to be relied upon heavily in the years to come and there is no doubt that many similar claims will soon be presented in the courts.
This was the first reported domestic award of damages for a child in care proceedings. Northamptonshire Local Authority accepted that their substandard handling of care proceedings had breached the mother and child’s Article 6 rights to a fair trial. The court found there had also been a breach of the party’s article 8 rights to respect for a private and family life.
Justice Keehan condemned the Local Authority for it’s “egregious failures” and there were a number of failings identified. The first failing, dealt with was that the local Authority had failed to offer the mother an interpreter when obtaining her consent to the child being accommodated pursuant to s20 CA 1989. Justice Keehan in his summary said it was an “unfortunate and woeful case” characterised by avoidable delays. They were unacceptably slow to undertake assessments of the parties and continuously failed to meet deadlines .They were deemed ineffectual in making care plans for the child, the main basis of this criticism was that the Local Authority took 3 months to decide whether to issue care proceedings and a further 5 months to issue care proceedings, all whilst the child was accommodated. Justice Keehan stated that there was “no satisfactory explanation for these extraordinary delays”.
Justice Keehan awarded damages totalling £16,000; he said “Their chaotic approach to this young baby’s care and future life was dismal”. The damages comprised of £12,000 for the child and £4,000 for the mother. The judge stated that damages were appropriate because the failings were likely to have a detrimental impact on the child’s long term emotional and psychological wellbeing. In response to the Service managers attempt to defend the Local Authorities actions, Justice Keehan said they had “attempted to defend the wholly indefensible”.
Reported 08/02/2015, familylawweek.co.uk