The District Court admitted most of the hearsay statements that kinship foster carers said a seven-year-old child had made, but excluded statements prompted by a leading question and said it could give the admitted material little weight. It declined to commission a further welfare report. The carers later chose not to proceed with their separate welfare application.
The foster carers, who were relatives approved as the child’s kinship carers, brought applications under sections 47 and 27 of the Child Care Act 1991. They sought directions about the child’s welfare while she was under a care order and asked the court to obtain a further professional report. Their applications relied on statements they said the child had made, with an application to admit those statements under section 23 of the Children Act 1997.
The case arose as the Agency planned to reunify the child with her parents and said it would not seek an extension of the care order when it expired. The carers opposed that decision. The judgment recounts conflicting accounts of the child’s wishes: the social worker said the child had expressed a wish to live with her parents, while the Guardian ad Litem reported that she had consistently said she wanted to remain with the carers. The judge accepted the social worker’s evidence that the child wanted to return to her parents while retaining affection for the carers.
The judge found that the statements in the first paragraph of Appendix 1 followed a leading question and risked unfairness to the parents and child. Those statements were not admitted as the child’s evidence, though they could be treated as the foster carer’s evidence. The court admitted the statements in the third part of Appendix 1 and specified portions of Appendix 2. It considered the recording was not contemporaneous, involved multiple hearsay and reflected the foster carer’s interpretation. The judge accepted the carer’s concern was genuine but said there was little certainty about the statements’ accuracy and gave them no substantial weight.
The judge declined, at that stage, to order another professional report under section 27, finding it unnecessary and disproportionate. The foster carers could have presented independent professional evidence; a GP letter they submitted did not corroborate the matters described in part of Appendix 1. After a recess, their counsel told the court that they would not proceed with the section 47 application. The judgment records that decision; it does not set out a determination of the merits of that application.