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Failure to implement a care order

I’ve done another judgment summary for Family Law Week. I’m finding its a useful way to gain an understanding of an area of law,.

This time I’ve dealt with the snappily titled Re E (A Child – Application to Discharge Care Order – Failures of Local Authority) [2025] EWFC 223 (B).

This was a judgment of HHJ Earley regarding an application by a child to discharge a Care Order that the Court had made ten months earlier. The Court dismissed the application and maintained the order, but in doing so made pointed comments regarding the local authority’s failures to implement the agreed care plan. The judge reviewed the legal authorities regarding the Court’s oversight of care placements, once a final order has been made. It is salutary reading for those working in social care and those representing Looked After Children.

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Discussing the role of parental consent in withdrawal of treatment cases

Over at Family Law Week, I have written two case summaries and a short legal analysis on the vexed issue of withdrawing care from seriously ill children.

  • In An NHS Foundation Trust -v- J [2025] EWHC 2247 (Fam), a child was born with catastophic brain damage after his mother suffered a cardiac arrest. The medical evidence was clear that it was not in the child’s best interests for him to stay on ventilation, but his mother did not have capacity to consent to withdrawal.
  • In The Trust -v- Z, FA and KB [2025] EWHC 2100 (Fam), a child was born with a congential brain abnormality and was being sustained only by invasive medical intervention. Several doctors were of the opinion that further treatment should be stopped, but his parents wanted to “give him the best chance” of continued life. The Court overruled the parents’ wishes and treatment was withdrawn.

In my short analysis I note that the law does not consider parental views to be determinative in these kinds of applications. They are relevant only to the extent that they illuminate the ‘best interests’ of the child. This is a point of law wiorht restating, because the lay-public’s view is often that parents should “have the final say” in such matters. I recall that this was the opinion expressed (often in shrill terms) during the Charlie Gard case in 2017 and the Archie Battersbee case in 2022.

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Re-Learning the Importance of Free Speech

The cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel Live! by ABC, in response to comments made by the Chair of the FDC, is an example of government coercion. The pressure put on ABC by Brendan Carr, and Donald Trump’s celebration of Kimmel’s departure were classic authoritarian manoeuvres and, given the central importance of the First Amendment in US Culture, deeply un-American.

My former colleague Suzanne Nossell, erstwhile CEO at PEN America, wrote a Los Angeles Times op-ed lamenting the “dark turn of American democracy.”

Some of us warned that this would happen. In response, I posted the following:

I must say this feels like a hideous “I told you so” moment. Progressive free speech campaigners spent the last few years listening to our allies in social justice movement trot out mantras like “freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences” or “it’s not my job to educate you” and sharing that annoying xkcd comic about ‘showing you the door’ somehow not being a kind of censorship.

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Votes For 16 Year Olds? That’s Still Too High

The voting age is to be lowered to 16. All the naysayers are trotting out exactly the same arguments that, a century ago, were deployed against giving women the vote. The same arguments that were deployed against giving black South Africans the vote.

People say that 16 year olds do not have the maturity or the intellectual sophistication to make an informed choice when they vote. People fear that they will be influenced by what their families will tell them to do. Or by cheap electoral bribes.

Well guess what folks: this is not the Civil Service Fast Track. This is not the Bar. There is no competency test by which people become eligible to vote. The franchise is ours by right and there is no minimum standard before a voter is allowed to make a choice. They are permitted to vote base on vibes or feels, or on a single issue, or astrology, or a toss of a coin, or ‘tribally’ based on how people they identify with have voted. It’s all permitted.

If people vote in their self interest, then I would posit that younger voters are more likely to consider the Long Term in their voting behaviour. That is a good thing and lending political support to long term political thinking is a good thing.

It is amusing and infuriating in equal measure that just the kind of people who said democracy was sacrosanct following the Brexit referendum may now be found decrying the extension of the franchise: it is not a good look and such arguments will not age well.

I do have one criticism of the policy, however: it does not go far enough. The correct voting age is 10 years old, the same as the age of criminal responsibility. If you are old enough to know right from wrong then I say you are old enough to vote. No further intellectual capacity is required under the current system and no further intellectual competence should be required of children before they participate in democracy, which is the same as participating in society.

In the meantime, votes for 16 year olds is a good start. Let us co-opt more citizens into our democratic system, and instil in them earlier the habit of voting. It will strengthen our politics and engage young people.

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Reasons to be Cheerful

Donald Trump, President-Elect

Donald Trump has won the presidential election.

This is terrible news. He is a convicted criminal and has no respect for the norms of democracy that keep societies together. He is unlikely help the poorest in society and the USA will remain divided for at least the next four years, probably much longer. The global climate is in greater peril. Ukraine’s predicament is worse. The outlook is bleak for the Gazans and the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

In the run-up to the election, the liberal press are full of warnings that this was somehow America’s last chance. The Atlantic posted articles on ‘The Fragility of American Freedom’ and the New Yorker Cover depicted Lady Liberty on a tightrope. The message is that now the USA has fallen to Trump, it will never recover.

The next few months and years will be galling and frustrating. But over the medium to long term, I remain optimistic. I think it’s helpful (if only to myself, as a coping mechanism) to list my heuristics and axioms.

Continue reading “Reasons to be Cheerful”