A Hostile Witness
This is when a witness is called by the prosecution or by the defence but doesn’t say what is expected or in my case what I was ordered to say by the local authority. I resigned over it but I waited until I had my day in court. I was lucky in that I was not so dependent on my job that I could afford to do this.
The case was involving two little boys aged 8 and 10 who were placed with foster carers we found through an agency. I am ambivalent about some of the privatization of services for children but given the poor state of some local authority’s fostering services, in a crisis we often ended up using them. This was rather a good agency who paid the foster carers well and gave them good support. It was a tenant farmer and his wife who stepped in and took these children, kept them for a month and facilitated time for the boys with their their mother who was a drug addict. Over the years the Local Authority had dithered about whether she could manage to care for them.
They were returned home which was in another county but a year or so later when things broke down again, the local authority decided to take care proceedings. I was again looking for a placement for them and again there was nothing locally. The mother was placed in a rehabilitation centre which happened to be near the foster home we had used before. I got them placed there again and it was two years before the court process ground on to a conclusion. The local authority said the foster carers had to work for them if they were going to keep the boys being paid significantly less and with any possible support being a hundred miles away. They quite understandably refused but said they did want to keep the boys. They enabled weekly contact for the boys with their mother in the nearby town as, although she had left the rehabilitation centre, she wanted to remain in the area to benefit from the outreach support. She was fearful that she would return to her old ways if she returned home. The old adage ‘a bad mother is better than no mother’ is so true and almost no matter what children will cling to their biological mother if possible. In many ways she was a kind and affectionate mother.
Family often come to the aid of the local authority when children need a placement but sometimes the local authority is so desperate to save money that they will consider any possible relative no matter how distant or whether they even know the child. In this case they wanted to approve a 19 year old sister of the mother who had lost touch with her some years before and barely knew the boys. She was living in a tiny flat with a newish boyfriend. She was reluctant to refuse to have them altogether but agreed to have them for the odd weekend. The care plan was to be based on this progressing to full care and their being moved back to the area to yet another placement in the interim.
By this time the boys were really settled playing rugby not football now as this was the sport that was popular among boys in the area. They both were showing promise and lived for Saturday rugby and seeing their Mum on a Wednesday. I dug my heels in and a monumental row followed about whether I was an employee or a professional and that I had to do what I was told. I refused and they could not sack me as the barrister for the mother already knew my position. Strangely the children’s guardian who I thought would support me sided with the local authority. I don’t think she liked me much and would turn up in court dressed in layers of colourful clothes, piercings and tattoos everywhere and bright pink hair. The mother of the children who had found a little black suit in a charity shop whispered to me ‘What is she like!’
Judges having the awful job of removing children from their parents’ care I am sure enjoy a bit of drama or light relief. I could see from his expression that he was intrigued by the situation. He can only make the care order he cannot order a local authority to use a certain placement but he can make his views pretty clear. The solicitor for the Local Authority put me through the ringer in the witness box but given the children’s wishes and the long delays and how settled the boys were in the placement, I was hopeful that they were on a hiding to nothing with their plan. The sister had said she would not attend court.
The Judge made his views very clear — agreed to the care order but said that despite the cost it would probably not turn out to be even economically advantageous in the long run to move these children yet again . I am sure I detected a wink in my direction as he left the court. I know the children remained there for the next couple of years, but as I have said before you never really know the outcome. If you have left the local authority it becomes confidential information. I definitely think I earned my stripes that day as a troublemaker.
