Adoption

The judge had had to decide whether to place two young children with their paternal aunt in Belgium or to allow them to remain with their long-term foster carer who had applied to adopt them. The judge had ordered that the children be sent to their aunt. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, allowed the foster carer’s appeal. The judge had erred in eliding the two welfare check-lists in the Children Act 1989 and the Adoption and Children Act 2002 and failed to give any regard to the effect on the children of removing them from the care of their primary attachment figure, when it was common ground that that was a strong and entirely positive relationship, and, likewise, failed to attribute any value, from the children’s perspective, to the continuation of that relationship.