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A NEW STUDY
by the universities
of Manchester and Brunel, funded by
the Nuffield Foundation, has been
looking at the incidence of recurrent
care proceedings in family courts and
found that approximately one in three
care applications concerns a mother
who ‘can be described as a repeat
client’. Problematic drug and alcohol
use – and associated chaotic lifestyles
– is a major contributory factor,
researchers say.
The research team studied records
held by the Child and Family Court
Advisory and Support Service
(Cafcass) – the only centrally stored
source of data linking children,
mothers and care proceedings –
covering the period from 2007 to
2013, and concentrated on completed
cases of recurrent care proceedings
issued under section 31 of the
Children Act 1989. Its conclusions
were that recurrence was a ‘sizeable
problem’ for family courts in England.
Local authorities issue care
proceedings when concerns are such
that compulsory legal intervention is
thought necessary to ensure the safety
and wellbeing of a child. While the
high volume of annual care
applications has led to members of
the judiciary raising concerns about
‘repeat clients’ who go on to lose their
children to care or adoption, no one
has really known the extent of the
problem until now.
During the period covered by the
study, 7,143 birth mothers appeared in
15,645 recurrent care applications
regarding 22,790 children. Was the
team surprised by the findings? ‘No, I
think we’ve underestimated the
problem,’ Dr Karen Broadhurst of the
University of Manchester tells
DDN
.
‘We can only capture recurrent care
proceedings, but children can come
into care through other routes – via a
section 20 agreement with a parent, or
they can bypass care proceedings and
relatives can apply for a private law
order or residence order, for example.
There are more children in care linked
to other children in care than we’ve
identified.’
The team has now applied for
funding for another two years to
undertake a large mixed-method
study, and it also carried out a pilot
study of qualitative interviews with 25
birth mothers, sponsored by one local
authority with a high recurrence rate. It
has also started in-depth research into
a randomly selected sample to look at
points of engagement with services
and opportunities for prevention.
The initial findings, however, were
picked up by several national
newspapers, most of which focused
on the extreme examples of women
having several children – into double
figures, in some cases – removed.
‘One of the things the media’s slightly
misrepresented is that there’s a
difference between cases of multiple
recurrences – one after another after
another – and mums who might have
a baby, then another one and stop and
grow up a bit and come back and
keep a child,’ Broadhurst says.
‘There’s a lot of variation behind the
big figure, which is quite important in
terms of prognosis for change. There
are some mums who require some
kind of adult protection response –
they’re highly vulnerable, with serious
mental health problems and learning
difficulties, probably in sexually
exploitative relationships with no
control over their lives, and then there
are other mums who are desperately
trying to get themselves out and have
the wherewithal to do that.’
Around 25 per cent of all children in
care proceedings are linked to
recurrent cases, the team found, with
the average interval between the start
of the first and second set of
Research findings about mothers having multiple babies removed by the
family courts hit the headlines recently.
DDN
hears about some of the issues
the newspapers overlooked
News focus |
Analysis
BREAKING BONDS
6 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| July 2014
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
‘There are some mums who
require some kind of adult
protection response – they’re
highly vulnerable, with serious
mental health problems and
learning difficulties, probably
in sexually exploitative
relationships with no control
over their lives, and then
there are other mums who are
desperately trying to get
themselves out...’
DR KAREN BROADHURST