Supreme Court to determine whether Inner House erred in child adoption case

The Appellants are EV’s parents. They both have learning disabilities. In 2010 the father was charged with criminal sexual conduct with another learning disabled person of a similar age. The charges were dropped. EV was born in December 2013 and was taken into care at birth. The Respondent Council was granted a permanence order in respect of EV in March 2016. It contained the mandatory provisions requiring parental responsibility of guidance and right to regulate the child’s residence to be vested in the council.

It also contained ancillary provisions which extinguished the other parental rights and responsibilities of the Appellants and vested them in the council. In addition, it specified there should be no contact between EV and the Appellants and included an order granting authority to adopt. The Appellants appealed. The Inner House, quashed the grant of authority to adopt and removed the prohibition on contact, however it upheld the rest of the permanence order.

The Appellants appeal against this decision. The issues in this case is whether the Inner House erred in inferring in the absence of express reasoning that the Lord Ordinary had addressed the threshold test for making a permanence order in section 84(5) of the Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007. Further whether: (i) allegations against a parent can be taken into account in assessing whether a permanence order should be granted where no finding was made as to the truth of those allegations; and (ii) taking such allegations into account would violate the parent’s rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Thirdly, whether a permanence order can be made without any effective provision for a natural parent to exercise responsibilities and rights of contact.