Introduction 6. LBS tried to invoke the public law outline before the Court case began, but there was limited engagement from the parents and so the application was made. 7. LBS has assessed each of M and F and says that, sadly, neither is in a position to care for the children, or any of them, and that care orders should be made. It has assessed David and Kate as potential carers for the children. David and Kate have 4 adult children together; LBS has never felt that David and Kate were not able to provide to their own children the care that they needed. David and Kate wrote a letter explaining why they disagree with the social workers’ assessment in this case. They were joined as intervenors to the proceedings so that they could challenge the assessment of them, but they did not take the opportunity to file a formal witness statement. I treated their letter as their written evidence, with the agreement of all of the parties. 8. LBS’ plan is that Harry will need to be placed separately from the other children, who will remain together in foster care. 9. M’s evidence from April 2025 accepts LBS’s plan but does not fully agree the proposed contact arrangements. She has, though, not attended contact since 19 March 2025. M and F have 3 older children, who were removed from their care in 2012 and later placed for adoption. In his closing submissions on her behalf, Mr Squire argued that the Court should adjourn for fuller and further assessment of David and Kate as potential special guardians, because the assessment of them was incomplete. 10. F made an application on 24 July 2025 for further assessment by an Independent Social Worker. That application was not listed for a hearing: it is not clear to me why not. F had not filed any evidence in these proceedings until after 10am on the first day of the final hearing. His lawyers filed a position statement on his behalf explaining that he supports the children being placed with David and Kate, but if that is not possible, he wants the children to be placed together. He has begun to spend time with the children once per month. The CG is worried that no risk assessment was undertaken by social services before that began. 11. F was in prison when he was assessed by LBS. He was released from prison in June 2025. He previously received a 27 month custodial sentence for a serious assault on M, and for breaching a non-molestation order, for which he received no further punishment. The assault took place over an extended period of time and the children were present in the home. He was released from that sentence in 2024 and recalled to prison for another assault and threat to kill offences, which relate to a different victim. I was told that neither M nor F considered that a screen was necessary. 12. The CG had not been told by F where he has been living since his release from prison, whether he is on licence or subject to conditions, though he gave an address in his witness statement on the first day of the trial. The CG believes F may have had a tag for a time, which limited where he could go, and that he may have a restraining order in place which prevents him from contacting M, but I have not seen any such order, and nor has the CG. I note that the parenting assessment of F says that the terms of the restraining order were varied in 8/24 so as to preclude F from using or threatening violence towards M, or molesting her, but not to stop him contacting her. 13. Ms Paxton supports the LA plans. 14. Harry was the subject of care proceedings in 2015, which concluded in a supervision order which expired in 2016. Issues 15. LBS is concerned that M & F each have had long term substance misuse problems, that the children were exposed to domestic abuse of M by F and others, that the children’s basic needs were neglected, that the home conditions were poor, that their attendance at school was poor and that they were sometimes encouraged to shoplift. Routines in the home were sometimes chaotic. The children have been exposed to anti-social behaviour and fights at or near the family home, sometimes in the early hours of the morning. Each of M & F also have had times when they have experienced poor mental health: they cannot be blamed for that, but the way that people behave when their mental health is poor can sometimes affect children. M had, just before the proceedings began, a new partner who herself had a great deal of Police involvement including for offences of violence, and was believed to be a substance misuser, and from whom a child had been removed. The social work chronology of the events before the proceedings began is a distressing document to read and consider. This short summary does not include all of the things that social workers were worried about but gives a flavour of their concerns. Law 16. In Re DAM (children) [2018] EWCA Civ 386, the Court of Appeal confirms that the essential questions the Court must ask itself are: What are the facts? Has the threshold been crossed? If so, what order is in the child’s best interests? Is that outcome necessary and proportionate to the problem? 17. The Court must have regard to the matters set out in s1(3) Children Act 1989. 18. Section 31 of the Children Act 1989 says, “A court may only make a care order or supervision order if it is satisfied — (a) that the child concerned is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm; and (b) that the harm, or likelihood of harm, is attributable to — (i) the care given to the child, or likely to be given to [them] if the order were not made, not being what it would be reasonable to expect a parent to give to [them]; …” These provisions are commonly called the threshold criteria. In brief, it means the children must have suffered or be likely to suffer significant harm because of poor parenting. Neither parent has challenged the factual basis on which the LA says that the threshold criteria are made out. I have considered the document at A1 of the bundle and am satisfied that there is cogent evidence before the Court to justify the matters set out in it, so I find as a fact that those circumstances exist for the children. 19. That simply means that the Court has the power to make a Care Order for each of the children. The real issue in this case is whether it should do so, or not. I need to weigh the pros and cons of each realistic option and decide what is in the best interests of the children. When I do that I must consider the matters set out in Section 1 of the Children Act 1989. At this stage, it is the welfare of each child that is the first and main consideration of the Court. 20. The European Convention on Human Rights applies to these proceedings. In Article 8 there is a right to family life. Each individual family member in this case has that right. A child should normally be with its parents, or one of them, and if not then with the wider family. These rights must be balanced. In Article 3 there is a right that no one shall be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment. A local authority may therefore have to act to protect children within its area. This means that if a child needs to be protected by the state from the sort of harm that these children have been exposed to in the past, the state can intervene by seeking a care order. In a democratic society any intervention into family life must be necessary and proportionate. 21. There must be a strong reason to justify removing a child from its parent or parents, but if such a reason exists then it is the child’s welfare which must be the paramount consideration. Where the maintenance of family ties would harm the child’s health and development, a parent is not entitled under Article 8 to insist that such ties be maintained. 22. That all means that I need to stand back and check whether any intervention in the private family life of this family is justified and proportionate to the harm that the children might suffer if an order was not made, or if some different order was made. Evidence 23. In addition to a bundle of documents I heard oral evidence from: 24. Geeta Rath: who gave her evidence from Japan, by video. There was no evidence of compliance with Annexe 3 to PD22A, but the parties unanimously relied on the guidance given by Poole J at paragraphs 110 onwards of his judgment in Newcastle CC v JK [2025] EWHC 1767 (Fam). I was persuaded that I could properly do so. Ms Rath praised Kate who she said had been “a brilliant parent” to her own children. She explained that the special guardianship assessment work had been done by a social worker in her team, who had gone off sick. Ms Rath was concerned about gaps in that work and considered that the outcome of the assessment should be negative. The social worker apparently agreed on reflection, because she later signed the negative assessment. Ms Rath did not shy away from the difficulties that the assessing social workers absence from work as soon as she had delivered a draft assessment had caused, or the imperfections in the final assessment that resulted, but she did stick firmly and clearly to the reasons why she concluded that the assessment of Kate and David was, on balance, a negative one. 25. She seemed to me to be a calm professional social work witness who was able to give credit and make concessions where appropriate, without conceding anything about her expert opinion evidence. Ms Rath’s main concern was proximity: Kate and David live close to M’s former home – I gather that M has been evicted, which may reduce that concern a little. However, it is plain that M and F know where Kate and David live and would be able to attend when they wished. Ms Rath noted that M had used her friends and associates to communicate with the children at school, which caused confusion and distress to the children. Her second main concern was the ability of Kate and David to manage the demands of their four existing adult children, who all have their own needs and who are likely to remain dependant on Kate and David to at least some degree for many years to come, as well as meeting the needs of these children, who sadly have experienced a great deal of trauma and neglect over the years. That is compounded by the extra needs of the children as displayed at school and at their foster home. Her third main concern related to the extent that Kate and David really accept the full extent of the way that F and M have parented the children and the harm that this has caused them. 26. Ms Rath thought that the children needed restorative parenting, with a therapeutic quality, and does not believe that Kate and David could, in the context of the very busy household, consistently deliver that extra special parenting the children need. 27. Kate: Aunt to the children, who was plainly devoted to them, and to her family. She and David married in 2023, after 31 years together. 28. She told me about an incident on the evening of Christmas Day 2023, when Harry had used M’s phone to contact her in distress at 9pm to say that Father Christmas had not been. She immediately went to the children’s home, and found them in their underwear, hungry, with faeces all over the place, and no signs of presents. M was asleep on the sofa and could not easily be raised. Kate described how she had got the children dressed, finally roused M who told her to ‘take the kids and eff off’. She took them to her home. There she bathed and fed them and they were asleep shortly afterwards. On Boxing Day morning she went to the shops, bought £50 of clothes for each child, and they had a Christmas day together, with food, presents and a trip to the Christmas Lights. She returned the children home on 30th December, because M had showed remorse, tidied up her home, and shown to Kate that she had done so. 29. Kate also told me that she qualified as a NNEB in 1998, and that she had worked in a care home and nursery, becoming a branch manager. She worked very long hours doing so. I was curious that she had not told social services about the events on Christmas Day 2023. She explained that she knew that Social Workers were involved, and that M had told her that she could twist the social worker around her little finger. I should have thought that would have made anyone with a training in children’s safeguarding more inclined to report a safeguarding concern. 30. Kate told me that the Special Guardianship health checks had been completed: the outcome was not in the bundle before me, but I have since seen it. 31. Kate told me, when asked, that she was aware that F had an argument with David a day or so earlier. David had sold F a car to help him on his release from prison, but F had failed to make all the payments on time, she said. I was concerned that this was not volunteered earlier, and that Kate had not volunteered that she knew that F had been out drinking with his friends in the weeks leading up to this hearing. She was clear that she and David were putting themselves forwards ahead of F. 32. Kate accepts that F has assaulted M and that this was wrong of him, and also that he became involved in a fight with another man about a pool table in the clubhouse near her holiday home site. That lead to F being recalled to prison. I was struck that Kate described M as being as much of an aggressor as F and said that the fight over the pool table was really F acting in self-defence. I was worried that this showed a real tendency to take F’s account and to minimise the risks that he poses to the children, despite his conviction for a brutal assault on M in the presence of the children. 33. Kate told me that she has security features at her home. I found it fairly easy to believe that she would feel able to say to M or F that it was not an agreed contact day and that they should leave: she struck me as a woman who was capable of making clear that she was not prepared to accept any nonsense. I was left, though, with the sense that she would allow F in particular but also M to become re-involved in the children’s lives, if she thought that F & M were behaving well enough. My fear was that she might approach that exercise too optimistically. Neither F nor M is a monster. Each of them is a loving parent who wants the best for the children. The problem is that each of M & F have shown that they cannot always sustain the good bits of their parenting, and there remains an unresolved risk of conflict. I am worried that Kate is overly optimistic in her approach to F in particular. 34. Kate accepted that the children come with a range of life experiences that her own children have not had. She thinks that she and David could cope with the challenges that would come. She did not accept that the children might experienced fragmented care being delivered by the various members of what would be a very busy and demanding household. 35. Kate had not seen the updated together and apart assessment, which concludes that Harry should be placed separately from the other children, because Harry’s own needs and his behaviour at times towards them means that he needs his own space. 36. Kate offers respite care for the children, if the Court endorses the Care Plans. 37. Jason Wright: who was previously the allocated social worker. He accepted that he had not read the assessment of Kate and David, which had been completed before he became the allocated social worker, and which seemed to me to be significant in the context of promoting a final care plan for the children to be placed outside their birth family. As he described the way in which he worked, it struck me that it might be criticised as lackadaisical, because he acknowledged not making calls or checks that would have been optimal, and which he knew were important or should have been done. He knew that a risk assessment was needed but just arranged contact. He tried to tell me that he did some kind of rudimentary risk assessment but it was clear from other answers that he understood that contact with F had to be sorted out so he just set it up, with cursory checks. His communication with the family was poor and I am left unsure what preparation, if any, the children had before they saw their father. They might have conflicting feelings about him. In the event, their joy in seeing him after so long was the predominant one. 38. Mr Wright told me that his practice was that not all matters were logged in case notes, though he knew this to be important. 39. He told me that he had 10 years‘ experience as a social worker and came to LBS as an agency worker in May 2025. He was tasked with 9 children’s cases, all in care proceedings. For 2 of those cases he had to write the local authority’s final evidence. That is a very great deal to take on from a standing start, and I am frankly not surprised that so many corners were cut. 40. Whilst I thought Mr Wright was an honest professional social work witness, I was not, in this case, reassured that he had fully grasped the nuances of the case much beyond the together and apart assessment he was tasked with. 41. F: I was struck that whilst F was able to acknowledge many of the tough things the children have experienced, and his responsibility for many of them, he has remained committed to them. He was determined to fight for them. He was not willing to give up on the chance of caring for them, which is what he would most dearly like to be able to do. He was able to recognise that, realistically, he is not in a position now to do so. He was also able to say that whilst he did the courses he could whilst he was in prison, he has not been able to do some of the really important work that Dr Keen had recommended and he recognises he will need to do. He was sad about that, but not as sad as he was that despite his requests from prison, he had been unable to secure contact at least by video with the children. He has patiently pursued contact with them since his release. His love for his children was clear and strong. 42. He recognises that his application for further assessment is unlikely to succeed, but he wanted to show that he had pursued the possibility. He supports the children moving to Kate and David. He acknowledges that the social workers don’t now support that, and the reasons why, but points out that the special guardian assessor initially was positive, and he doesn’t agree with the change of heart shown by LBS. 43. His biggest concern was that the children should not be separated, which he thinks will be harmful to Harry in particular. He thought the harm to Harry outweighed any potential benefit to the other children. He does not want the children, and Harry particularly, to have the same experience of being in care that he had and recognised the outcomes of care had been poor for him. He wanted much better for Harry and all the children. 44. He does not shy away from the fact that he has convictions, but actually his evidence tended to minimise his own responsibility. He told me that M had repeatedly assaulted him, and over the years he had suffered a fractured cheekbone and broken nose, amongst other injuries, at her hands. That allegation was not put in F’s written evidence and M was not properly able to challenge it: it would be unfair to her for me to conclude that was true, but that is not the same as saying that I do not believe F: I am simply noting what he has said about that. In respect of the assault on 27.12.22, he told me that he woke to find M on top of him and the dog biting him, and he then fought M off. He was convicted on M’s account that he had repeatedly beaten her during the night, causing bruises to her head arms and legs, to the point that she lost consciousness. When she came round, she told police, she then tried kill F with a phone charging lead which snapped. Some elements of that F accepted, but some he does not, despite his conviction. 45. He also told me that he had fought when attacked by 3 men in August 2024 he did so in self-defence, though he accepts that he pleaded guilty to a lesser assault rather than risk going to trial on a GBH charge. He also told me that he had seen a psychiatrist or psychologist in preparation for sentence on that matter. He said that he had been downgraded to medium risk by his probation officer. That doesn’t quite tally with an email from his Probation Officer dated 10/9/25 which says that he was convicted of wounding with intent and is currently assessed as presenting a high risk of Serious Harm, though that may soon be reduced to medium if F maintains his current trajectory. 46. F was candid in many ways when he gave his evidence. He told me that he has been out a few times with his friends, and alcohol has been consumed. He told me that he has a couple of drags on a joint to help him sleep each night. He said that someone gives him joints for free, and each joint lasts him 3 or 4 days. He is wise enough to know that this is a slippery slope for him, given his past history. 47. F was given a suspended prison sentence for the wounding with intent offence. If he is convicted of a further offence committed in the next 15 months or so, the suspended sentence may be activated. He told me that he was determined not to risk going back to prison again, and I note that both he and his probation Officer have been pleased by his progress since his release in June: this is to his credit. 48. F told me that he was aware of the state of the house on Christmas Day 2023 because he had arranged for a friend to call at the house whilst he was on the phone to F from prison. The friend told F the state of the house. F accepted that with hindsight both he and Kate should have told social services. He was critical of social services for not having intervened sooner than they did after he got sent to prison. Perhaps, if he had shared his own concerns, they might have done so. He says that with hindsight he tried to protect M for far too long. 49. Ms Paxton: Told me that she understood that M & F had been involved in a verbal fracas near the security gates to the Court on the previous day. She told me that she understood that security officer had to intervene and that Kate had stepped in to mediate. No one challenged that understanding. It shows how real is the concern that M & F bring with them a real risk of conflict which can involve others. It is to Kate’s credit that F in particular seems to respect her and to accept her advice, but it is plain that even being in the Court building is not enough to prevent issues and in the community there is plainly an unresolved risk to consider. 50. She noted Dr Keen’s parenting assessment of F and did not consider that F could show that he had completed much of what Dr Keen had advised was needed. It might be that in the future he could do so, but the CG thought this was likely to be a year or more into the future. 51. She was critical of the social work support that the family have received. There has been a lot of turnover of staff, Mr Wright’s fleeting involvement omitted the risk assessment she considered essential and there has been little to no support for the children who only recently found out what their care plan was. She considers that they need urgent work to help them understand that plan. 52. She recommended a plan for long term contact which allowed for roughly 7 contacts a year for the children with each of F, M, Kate and David, mostly at school holidays so that longer and higher quality activity based contact might be arranged. 53. There were no disputed facts that I needed to determine. I have not addressed absolutely every point that arose in evidence or submissions, just those that I consider it necessary to address to reach a just conclusion. What order is in the child’s best interests? 54. I must have regard, when moving to consider the welfare of the children to the following matters in particular: (a) the ascertainable wishes and feelings of the child concerned (considered in the light of his age and understanding); the children wish to live with Kate and David. If they can’t do so, they wish to stay with their current carer. They obviously recognise that neither M nor F is currently able to care for them. They naturally want to stay in their family, but they are not really old enough to understand all the long term risk, advantages and disadvantages of this, so their wishes may not prevail. It is natural that they wish to stay with their current carer, if they cannot live with their family. That is all they have known, and their current carer has, with support, kept them safe and well and met their needs, albeit in a way the CG described as rather functional. (b) his physical, emotional and educational needs; Harry has been assessed as needing a separate placement. The CG told me that if he was not a looked after child, he would likely have been excluded from school by now. M agrees that his aggressive approach towards his siblings may have been learned from the way that F behaved towards her. The CG thought that he has taken on a parenting role for the children, and likely did so whilst M was intoxicated or unconscious at home. Sadly, he does so in an aggressive way and that may be because it is the style he observed at home. I could see no reason to disagree with the expert evidence about Harry’s needs. He and Tommy may, in time, have additional educational needs. All of the children are said to have a need for calm, restorative parenting with a therapeutic quality. There is nothing in the evidence that suggests that the busy household of Kate and David will allow the time and space for that, and I worry that despite their love for and commitment to the children, Kate and David will struggle to be able to meet those needs. (c) the likely effect on him of any change in his circumstances; Since being in foster care, the health needs of the children have been much more consistently met. Their school attendance is vastly improved. Harry and Amy’s sleep – for which they had been prescribed (but not given) medication when at home has not been a problem. They have a routine. It has been very difficult to maintain the current placement, and additional support has been needed. Whatever I decide will involve a lot of change. If the children move to Kate and David I think they would be delighted and immediately at home. Kate told me that she wants to change the children’s school, and I see the problems that M and her associates has caused for the children in the past. I worry greatly that placement at Kate and David’s will, sooner or later, break down in a way that is devastating for each of the children, as well as for Kate and David and their family. I agree with the CG that the risk of that is relatively high. That would inevitably mean a further bout of temporary foster care, assessments and the children would be even more damaged, and the likely outcomes for them even worse. I do not consider that the children can afford that risk. All of the children will move to new carers. I would expect LBS to be able to find placements for Amy and Tommy together, but that cannot be guaranteed. Harry will be placed separately and he and they will need careful preparatory, life story and post-placement work, and a dedication to sibling contact, to help mitigate that. If I endorse the LA plan, contact with each of the other family members will reduce. I expect the LA plan to set out how, because it won’t immediately switch to the long term pattern. The contact arrangements for F are to be the subject of a risk assessment and for M a restart planning meeting. (d) his age, sex, background and any characteristics of his which the court considers relevant; Each of the children has White British heritage. (e) any harm which he has suffered or is at risk of suffering; The threshold findings apply. These children have been exposed to long term neglect of their physical and emotional needs. They have been exposed to their mother’s alcohol and substance misuse, and all the associated issues of intoxication, hangover, and the need to finance those habits. Their home life was at times chaotic and there were drug dealers and others in and out of the house. M and F have been in what F now describes as a toxic relationship – there must have been awful shouting and conflict, and sometimes violence to which the children were exposed. There has been gross physical and emotional neglect. The children are likely to need calm, patient, devoted and consistent care throughout the remainder of their childhood. (f) how capable each of his parents, and any other person in relation to whom the court considers the question to be relevant, is of meeting his needs; Neither M nor F is currently able to care for the children. They will not realistically be in a position to do so for many months at least. Each will need to do a good deal of work with professionals before they could even be considered as possible options. The children cannot afford to wait for that to happen. Kate and Harry have a 3 bedroomed home and have converted the dining room into a 4th bedroom. Already living there are the couple and their four adult children. When the children I am concerned with stay, two of them share a sofa and one sleeps on an inflatable bed. That is fine for sleepovers and short breaks, but is plainly inadequate accommodation for the children to move to live in. There is nothing in the SG Support plan about accommodation. Kate hopes that LBS could allocate a larger property if the children came to live with her and David. If that were the only issue, I could adjourn to enable the question of accommodation to be more fully addressed, but I plainly could not endorse that arrangement now. I have no doubt that Kate and David would devote themselves to the care of the children if they were to go to live with Kate and David. The health checks and DBS checks for them raised no reasons they could not care for the children. I also have confidence that they would maintain the children’s school attendance, which has been very good whilst they have been in foster care. I was worried by Kate’s failure to tell Social Services about the events of Christmas 2023. I thought that was an example of her overly optimistic approach to the risks posed by the parents to these children. That shows too in her alignment to the views of F about his violent offences, and that reduces the confidence I have in her ability truly to understand the needs of these children arising from their life experiences. Ultimately, I can see no reason to disagree with the expert evidence that I have heard. I thought Kate was impressive when she gave her evidence, and she has by all accounts done a phenomenal job in meeting the needs of her family. Sadly, I think that trying to care for these three children would be taking on too much, and it would be very likely to result in failure, with a great deal of distress, conflict and heartbreak on the way. (g) the range of powers available to the court under this Act in the proceedings in question. I could make no order, but that would fail to secure the protection of the children. I could make a Care Order. I could not properly make a SGO today, but I could adjourn with tight case management directions so as to consider making one shortly, if I thought that the right outcome. Conclusions & Order 55. I was impressed that M managed to attend any of this hearing. She returned after the fracas with F and remained for some time when he left, insulting her, during judgment. She reached the brave but realistic conclusion that she was not able to care for the children and that she needs to work on her own health and substance misuse problems some months ago. Some parents would have disengaged entirely since then. Even though she has stopped attending contact, which I suspect is simply too painful for her, and has been evicted from her home, and has minimal contact with her solicitors, she was able to attend part of the hearing and listened to some of the evidence and much of this judgment, even though that was really hard for her. That shows that she loves each of the children dearly. By recognising that she can’t currently care for them, she has tried to put their interests first, rather than leave them with false hope. 56. F’s love for each of the children cannot be doubted. He is determined to fight for them, and I hope that they are told this. 57. F’s application for a parenting assessment to be undertaken can only be ordered if I am satisfied that it is necessary to be able fairly to determine these proceedings. I would need to have regard to the cost – which is not a significant factor in this case, in my view — and the impact on the proceedings and the children of the consequent delay in resolving their future. That delay would be huge, and very damaging. I gather that this is week 65 of these proceedings. S1(2) of the Children Act 1989 says such delay “is likely to prejudice the welfare of the child”. In any event, I simply do not consider that further assessment of F is necessary. There is an unchallenged assessment of F by Dr Keen. All that has changed is that F is now out of prison. F accepts that he has not yet completed any of the long term work that Dr Keen identified as necessary. There is simply no further assessment of his ability to care for the children that is needed at this time. 58. Mr Squire argued that the assessor’s special guardianship assessment was positive but incomplete, and that Ms Rath’s supervision doesn’t change that, so I should adjourn for further assessment. I do not agree. The special guardian assessor was not able to attend this hearing nor deal with much after submitting a draft assessment, but she was able to sign the final report, endorsing Ms Rath’s comments and agreeing with its negative conclusions. The Court does not need further assessment evidence to determine this case, in my view. 59. The issue comes down to this: is it in the best interests of each child to move to live with Kate and David and their family, or will they need to be placed into care, with the local authority charged with finding suitable long term placements for them? 60. If I thought they should live with Kate and David I could not properly make SGOs today, because their current accommodation is not adequate, but I could give rapid case management directions to enable the Court to decide what order would best enable that outcome. I would not hesitate to do so if I thought that was the right outcome for the children. 61. The advantages of placement in some way with Kate and David are: they would remain within their family, with the current unconditional love and support of that family; they have existing bonds with that family; they would remain together as a sibling group; their individual identities would be promoted; they would have Kate and David able to exercise parental responsibility for them, and to allow such natural and informal contact with each of their parents as Kate and David thought fit; they have proved themselves to be capable parents who have raised their own 4 children, each of whom has or has had additional needs of their own. 62. The disadvantages are that Kate and David already have a busy household with 4 adult children all of whom have some needs. Their eldest son finds strangers coming to the house difficult to manage and it is plain that he is not normally left alone. Carers allowance is paid for three of the adult children. Three have additional needs. It is going to be extremely demanding for Kate and David to take on three children, who have experienced a very great deal of trauma and neglect, and who are each displaying that they have significant additional needs. Neither the social workers nor the CG think that it is realistically likely that a foster home could be found which will be able to care for the children together, and there is sadly a real risk that Kate and David are going to be overwhelmed by the competing needs of the 7 younger people, and that the placement will fail, which would be devastating for the children. Social Workers and the CG worry that Kate and David’s home is too close to the parents: they worry that M will turn up to the home or at school and undermine the placement, that F might do so; that Kate and/or David will be drawn into future conflict between or with M & F. Kate and David do not seem fully to appreciate the experiences of the children to date and the risks, especially of emotional harm, to them, and this means they may take an overly optimistic view of their ability to meet and to manage the children’s needs and also to manage the roles of M & F in their lives. Social Workers also worry that the care the children receive will be fragmented across the adults in Kate and David’s home. 63. The advantages of the children being placed in the care of Social Services is that permanent plans can be made for them to live with alternative carers, and they can build a family life there in which their needs are not neglected, and where they can receive the space and individual support they need; their ties to F, Kate and her family and M can be met through ongoing contact. The disadvantages are the loss of their birth family in their day to day lives, the fact that social services will place Harry separately – even with regular sibling contact, there will be an adverse impact on each, mitigated by the positive effects of Harry being able to be a child without needing to parent his younger siblings, and they are freed from some of the aggression he shows to them. There is uncertainty about when future foster placements will be found, and the care system can be unfeeling and characterised by poor social work. The CG is critical of the poor social work and high turnover of social workers the children have received to date. The risk of foster placement breakdown cannot be discounted. 64. The expert social work advice, supported by a very experienced CG, is that the balance lies clearly and firmly in favour of the children being placed in care. 65. As impressive as Kate has been in her devotion to the children, I agree with the assessment of GR and CG that the risks of attempting to place the children with Kate and David are simply too high. I was really concerned that Kate did not share with social services her concerns at Christmas 2023. I have considered whether they might be able to care for just one or two of the children, especially given the plan to place them separately, but I do not believe that this would lessen the disadvantages enough. 66. In the end, and with the CG’s concerns about the adequacy of social work to date ringing in my ears, I nevertheless conclude that it is in the best interests of each of the children that they be placed in the care of LBS. 67. Until now the purpose of contact has been to maintain a bond with M, F and Kate and David so that if the Court concluded the children should live with them, that could be achieved. Going forwards, the purpose of contact changes. The children will need to become confident in the long term security of their foster homes and contact with their birth family is to maintain their sense of identity and to keep alive those lifelong connections: that is normally achieved by much less frequent contact. 68. The LA told me that it agreed with the contact plan proposed by the Children’s Guardian. I endorse the amended contact plan, and direct that LBS files, serves and sends to Kate and David an amended contact plan within 7 days, to capture their amended contact plan at the conclusion of this hearing. That must include M, F, Kate and David and each of their adult children, as well as sibling contact. There is not, in my judgment, a need for any order to be made about contact. 69. In my judgment, the making of care orders is in the best interests of each child, it is necessary and it is proportion to the harm they would suffer otherwise. I therefore make Care Orders in respect of each of the children. 70. I ask that this note be shared with the IRO, who Ms Paxton considered to be one of the few points of consistency for the children. I hope that Kate’s offer of respite care is not forgotten, though I express no view about whether it might be right in any given future circumstance, merely that it be considered if needed. Transparency 71. As part of the work of the Family Court, Judgments in writing are normally published. However, care must be taken to ensure that the Judgment does not allow the children to be identified – and that means that none of the family members can be identified, either directly or because details are given which would enable someone to work out who the children were. 72. I will send to the advocates a second draft of this note which I will have tried to anonymise. I often do that by using alternative names for people who are involved in the case. I propose to call these children Harry, Amy and Tommy, and to refer as the paternal uncle and aunt as David and Kate. Lawyers and Social Workers are generally named, but I have changed the name of the locum social worker who I have criticised to Jason Wright. I ask that the lawyers jointly consider that note and let me have a composite list of any further alterations that might be needed to achieve confidentiality. I ask that the LA checks with those adults concerned that they don’t think that they can be identified from the anonymised note, as part of that process.