The Royal Court found that the minister had shown a ‘lack of commitment’ to an earlier judgment it had made and said that the Children’s Service needed to change its mindset about returning the children to their mother.
According to a recently published judgment, the minister had previously applied for the children to live outside Jersey.
However, the court decided that the children should be returned to their mother, although acknowledged that ‘it was not safe to do so immediately’.
At the time an interim care order was made but ‘it was made plain that, unless the mother suffered any serious relapses in terms of alcohol or substance misuse, the children would be returned to her’.
The court also stated it was likely a supervision order should be sought and that a package of measures needed to be ‘considered constructively between the minister and the mother’.
However, the most recent judgment in the case states that when the court reconvened ‘It was quite apparent that the minister intended to request the court to make a final care order and approve a care plan involving long-term off-Island fostering and limited contact with the children’s birth families.’
The judgment adds: ‘It is clear to us that it is not simply a matter of the minister having been consistently late in filing documents and providing detailed structure to the parents as to what help was to be offered and what they, particularly the mother, would be asked to do; he has simply disregarded the findings that the court made at the earlier hearing.’
However, the judgment says the court was ‘convinced’ at the earlier hearing that approving a care order for long-term fostering in the UK was wrong in this particular case.
The judgment says that the parents had committed to lifestyle changes, with the mother making ‘very substantial progress’ since last September and the father making progress recently.
And it also notes that psychologists had said the removal of the children from their mother’s care, their schools, extended family and friends, as well as Jersey, was ‘potentially completely traumatic’.
‘The minister’s lack of commitment to the judgment of the court, revealed in the directions hearings since that judgment, and the likely trauma which would be caused to these children if we engaged with that process again re-emphasises the view which we had previously taken,’ the judgment states.
The court, which imposed a 12-month supervision order, also found that ‘Children’s Services will have to change the mindset which they have had, not just for the last years, but in particular which they have had since the delivery of the court’s judgment.’
The Bailiff, Sir William Bailhache, and Jurats Anthony Olsen and Elizabeth Dulake were sitting.
