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An autistic mother and daughter are suing Birmingham City Council for separating them during child protection proceedings claiming that the council was negligent in pursuing a care order, did not understand neurodiversity, and had breached their human right to family life.
The child, who was born in 2016, was taken into care when she was seven weeks old, after her mother had asked the local authority for support.
Byline Times learned of her story through the Family Court Reporting Pilot which allows accredited journalists access to court hearings that have historically been held in private. No details that can lead to the parties involved being identified can be reported.
The mother, who was subjected to intimate partner violence by the child’s father resulting in an indefinite restraining order and criminal conviction against him, contacted the council because she felt anxious about being a first time mother. She expressed fears about whether her autism might make parenting more challenging and whether the abuse she suffered by the father might affect the way she felt about their daughter.
Local authority staff claimed the mother was mentally unwell and had a borderline personality disorder, and applied for a care order.
The child, who is now eight, was initially placed in foster care for more than 20 months and then given to her paternal grandmother to be looked after. The care proceedings for the child concluded in 2018 and the child was returned to her mother.
“Because I was taken from momma at the age of seven-weeks-old, I feel that whenever momma goes out to the shops or something she will not come back,” the young girl told Byline Times. “I don’t think the courts make decisions that are the best for children. Social services did not provide me with a life story while I was in foster care, so I don’t even know my first word.”
Several court filings, which this newspaper has seen, are critical of the local authority’s actions, with one judge concluding that the mother “had been deprived of the opportunity to demonstrate her ability to care [for her daughter]” and that both mother and child were now “seeking damages from the local authority”.
The details of the claim against Birmingham City Council, which have been shared with Byline Times, allege that the mother and daughter suffered psychological harm as a result of the care order and that the council had prevented the child from forming a secure attachment to her mother. The filing also alleges that the council failed to provide opportunities for the mother to breastfeed and restricted their ability to bond.
The claim goes on to allege that the council’s removal of the child was not in her “best interests and was a disproportionate and draconian response to the difficulties experienced by [the mother],” and “failed to appreciate that [the mother] had not been provided with adequate intervention and specialist support”. The council is also accused of providing “contact arrangements that were initially chaotic and denied any contact”.
The young girl has since been diagnosed with an attachment disorder and is waiting for an assessment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
The UK’s Care Crisis
The United Nations has become increasingly concerned by the numbers of children being placed into care in the UK. Observations produced by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2023 urged the UK to take a child rights-focused approach to children’s social care and ensure children’s voices were heard in care proceedings. It also pushed for the UK to reduce the number of child removals and to do so through “early intervention and preventative services”.
Government figures show there were 83,840 children in care at the end of March 2023, equivalent to one child in every 140. Children with Special Educational Needs (SEND) appear to be disproportionally represented.
Research produced in 2020 by UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health found that 80% of children in England who were in care between the ages of five and 16 received support for SEND, which includes children with a diagnosis of autism. Established research estimates that one in five people in the UK are neurodiverse.
Neurodiversity refers to the different and natural ways in which people’s brains process the world around them. It can refer to the learning and processing differences found in children and adults, including autism, ADHD and SEND.
Details about the case against Birmingham City Council emerged in documents produced for a separate but related set of proceedings in the family courts about the girl’s contact arrangements with her paternal family which began in 2019. The child began to complain in 2022 about a contact order which had been put in place and an application was filed by the mother to vary it.
The arrangements broke down in part because the father failed to write letters to his daughter as required by the order, and to read letters she had written to him. The paternal grandmother also made comments during contact which upset the child, including repeated remarks about her autism “not being real” and being constantly asked to keep secrets from the mother.
The mother was accused of trying to turn the child against the father and paternal grandmother and as a result engaging in parental alienation.
The final hearing for the family court case was held in August in the Birmingham Family Court. The child’s father did not attend and had a Qualified Legal Representative acting on his behalf.
Qualified Legal Representatives’ are appointed by the court to ensure cross-examinations of vulnerable witnesses such as victims of domestic violence are not carried out by the perpetrators of the abuse. The mother attended the hearing with her barrister and solicitor, while the paternal grandmother attended with her Qualified Legal Representative.
In her application to vary the contact order, the mother said her daughter’s health had deteriorated significantly since the order was made and alleged that the contact arrangements between her daughter and her paternal family, which were produced by the Cafcass support service, had not been mindful of her daughter’s needs as an autistic person and did not take into account her daughter’s wishes and feelings. They included wanting to be able to decide when to see her father and paternal grandmother. The mother added that her experience of intimate partner violence with the father had also been ignored by the Cafcass officer.
The child tried to