The Court of Appeal has upheld a High Court order requiring the Child and Family Agency to explain why it concluded that a child abuse complaint made by G.H. was unfounded.
G.H. had been placed in foster care as a child and complained to the agency in 2015 about alleged emotional and physical abuse and neglect during that placement. An initial assessment produced a report in 2017 identifying matters of concern, but the agency later accepted that the assessment had been flawed and began a fresh process.
That second assessment was determined to be unfounded on December 19, 2022, although G.H. was not formally notified of the outcome until July 2023. She subsequently brought judicial review proceedings seeking, among other reliefs, reasons for the decision.
In April 2025 the High Court ordered the agency to provide those reasons. The Child and Family Agency appealed, arguing that its published Child Abuse Substantiation Procedure did not give a person making a disclosure a right to reasons and that an unfounded assessment had no legal consequences for G.H. sufficient to give her standing to challenge it.
The Court of Appeal rejected those arguments on March 12, 2026.
Mr Justice Anthony M. Collins said the uncontested facts showed that the assessment affected G.H. in a real and meaningful way. Her complaint concerned matters of importance to her childhood, wellbeing, relationship with her foster carer and dignity. That was sufficient to establish the necessary legal interest to seek judicial review.
Once she had standing to challenge the decision, the court held that she was entitled to know why it had been made so she could assess whether it was lawful.
The court also found that the agency's own procedure did not clearly exclude giving reasons to a complainant.
The appeal was dismissed and the High Court order affirmed. The court's provisional view was that G.H. should also receive her costs of the appeal.