New guidance for judges in England is intended to reduce the number of mothers required to attend child care proceedings within hours or days of giving birth. Same-day hearings should be granted only when a child’s immediate safety would be at risk without court intervention, according to the Judiciary’s guidance.
The changes follow concerns about a rise in urgent family court applications involving newborns and reports of mothers having to attend hearings while recovering from labour. The guidance says same-day applications should be extremely rare and courts should refuse cases that do not meet the urgency criteria.
Applicants seeking an emergency hearing or a short-notice listing, held within five days, must provide evidence explaining why it is needed. If a judge considers the case less urgent, it will be listed through the standard process, between days 12 and 18. The Judiciary said the approach is intended to give parents and guardians more time to respond and focus urgent intervention on cases that require it.
More than half of urgent care hearings in England in 2024-25 involved newborns, according to the report. Research from the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory found that more than 70% of care proceedings involving babies in England were emergency hearings within two days of an application.
The Observatory’s head of practice and policy, Emma Smale, welcomed the guidance. She said the share of newborn care proceedings in England and Wales involving a same-day hearing doubled over the decade from 2012-13 to 2022-23, rising from one in 10 to one in five. Smale also said separating a mother and baby soon after birth is widely recognised as deeply traumatic, and raised concerns about parents’ ability to take part effectively in decisions with profound consequences.
A Newborn Baby Protocol has also been issued to promote fairness when care proceedings begin immediately after a child’s birth. It says early referral and assessment by local authority children’s services should support timely preventative help, including identifying and strengthening family networks where that is in the child’s best interests. Before applying for a care order, a Family Group Decision Making Meeting must be offered to parents, in line with the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026.
Sources: BBC News UK.