High Court Steps in to Protect Drug Addict’s Baby Boy

16/03/2017


The family courts are focused on saving children from harm and ensuring their future welfare. In one case, the High Court opened the way for adoption of a little boy who was found in his mother’s arms as she lay slumped outside a shop in the throes of a drug overdose.

The boy was two months old when his mother was seen staggering around in public. She dropped him inside the shop and, when police arrived, she was sitting outside with the boy drooped over her arm, his head inches from the pavement. The local authority for the area swiftly launched care proceedings.

The mother resisted the boy’s adoption and the Court acknowledged that she was an intelligent and articulate woman who had fallen under the bad influence of a former partner, also a drug user. She had sought help to conquer her addiction and had a strong sense of herself as a valiant victim of a difficult childhood.

However, the Court noted that she was notably less eloquent when speaking of her child’s needs and had exhibited little sense of her own responsibility for her present predicament. She was unable to give her son a stable, secure family life in which he could develop his potential and the Court found that freeing him for adoption was the only practical alternative.

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