With regard to the father’s standing, there are two aspects of this case which disturb me. The first is that it seems as though getting the child into a ‘permanent’ home is more important than getting her into the best home for her (which could well be the father’s).

This will resonate with many fathers who feel that they could provide as good, or better, a home for their children than the mother provides, but they had been placed previously with the mother at an early age for biological reasons (e.g. breast-feeding) and the courts refuse to disturb the status quo.

The second, relating to the biological issue is that, were circumstances different, the CSA would be chasing the father.
Of course the circumstances would have to be such that the CSA would become involved, and they couldn’t do so in this case. However, the simple matter of the logistics do not negate the fact that, on the one hand, the father has no rights to even know about the child’s existence but on the other hand would have financial responsibility for her were the mother to have kept the child, revealed his identity and contacted the CSA.

Taxation without representation led to the American War of Independence. Can we really justify (financial) responsibility without parental rights?

STH

STH

What surprises me about the case, and I’m not a lawyer so may well have misunderstood, is the weight given to the mother’s wishes, and the criticism made of the local authority. Surely the mother, by abandoning her child in the hospital, also abandoned her right to determine the child’s future, while the LA was merely doing its duty under s.22 of the Children Act (especially 4, b).

It seems to me that the court’s decision has made it nigh on impossible for ‘E’ to track down her father in the future. Some of the most interesting and pertinent comments on this case have been made by those people, now adults, who have similarly been denied knowledge of their fathers (e.g. phone-in on Radio 5 Live on Friday evening), all of whom condemn this decision. It is a great shame that the courts do not take such experiences into account; it is difficult to believe that this child will consider the court acted in her best interests when she is old enough to judge.