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Thanks to Butterworths.co.uk
Problems in tracking parents in disputed child care cases
The Solicitor General announced that civil cases in which children have been
taken into care on disputed medical evidence are to be reviewed. A tough and
complex operation according to Vera Baird QC of Tools Court Chambers, and an MP
involved in Commons debates on the issue. She talks to Stephen Ward�
In the wake of the discrediting
of expert paediatric evidence used to convict mothers of cot death victims, Not
only parents who have been convicted of harming children, but parents whose
children were taken into care on disputed medical evidence are to have their
cases reviewed. But tracking them down, and deciding how to resolve any
misdiagnoses will be a much tougher and more complex proposition, according to
Vera Baird QC of Tools Court Chambers and an MP involved in Commons debates on
the issue.
The attorney general Lord Goldsmith has identified that there are 258 criminal
convictions and 15 pending cases to be reconsidered by the Director of Public
Prosecutions in the light of the appeal court judges� reasons for quashing the
conviction of Angela Canniness for murdering her two baby sons.
But the later announcement by the solicitor general Harriet Harman that civil
cases would also be reviewed has far greater attendant difficulties, not least
because there are probably thousands cases in which mothers suspected of harming
their children have not been prosecuted but have had their children removed by
court order in care proceedings brought by local authorities.
Baird says civil courts will have decided issues on the less onerous balance of
probabilities. "Because of apprehensions raised particularly on paediatric
evidence suitability as parents called into questions children will have been
taken into care sometimes there will have been a cot death or a baby death, then
further children are taken into care at birth."
"I�ve had several meetings with Margaret [Hodge, the minister for
children] and we�ve been running through the range of possible options. There
are huge difficulties. Firstly finding the case files- some are very old and
they will be spread throughout the country. Although Prof Meadow and the others
were based in particular locations, of course they travelled to do cases all
over the place."
One possibility, she says, is to ask the paediatricians who have given expert
evidence to check their own VAT returns to produce lists of cases they appeared
in. "I don�t know if they would co-operate with that".
"The next possibility is for the Government to write to all social services
directors to look out their files for care orders in which infant death had been
testified to by medical evidence." But this will be an enormous task,
because files from the past will not have been computerised. Another idea is to
write to every member of the Solicitors Family Law Association sending a copy of
the judgment in Canning and asking if they�ve had cases they may want to
consider if they want to return to some of these files.
"We�ve also toyed with making an announcement that anybody who
thinks they are a party would approach their solicitor for advice."
Baird says her preference would be for all these to be pursued, and not to rely
on one or two of the methods. She says a review of files by a senior family
judge to decide which might be re-opened would be another alternative, but
parents would still have to go to court for a decision, so in her view that
would be "quite a heavy handed way of doing it."
Where injustices are uncovered in criminal cases, the mother is released, but
the remedy is less straightforward in civil cases. "If children have been
adopted it is almost irrevocable. In care cases it is slightly easier because
they are not as permanent, and fostering may have broken down anyway so children
often not as settled as when they have been adopted," she says.
(02/02/04)
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