Recurrent care proceedings: Part 2: Young motherhood and the role of the court (£)

JUDITH HARWIN Professor of Social Work Brunel University

KAREN BROADHURST Senior Lecturer in Socio-Legal Studies University of Manchester

SOPHIE KERSHAW Service Manager Family Drug and Alcohol Court

MIKE SHAW Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist Child and Family Department at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust

BACHAR ALROUH Research Fellow Brunel University

CLAIRE MASON Research Associate University of Manchester Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust

This is the second in a series aimed at stimulating a national conversation about recurrent public law proceedings.

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One of the most concerning findings of our recent feasibility study into the national scale and pattern of recurrent care proceedings was the young age of the mothers (Broadhurst et al 2014: http://www.familylaw.co.uk/news_and_comment/captu... Fifty per cent of all mothers caught up in a cycle of recurrent care proceedings were aged 24 or less at the time of the first application recorded in our observational window (2007–2013). Some of these mothers had been involved in not just two but in multiple successive proceedings and although the numbers were small they...

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