Ruling yesterday on a Dutch case, the Strasbourg court found that the relevant authorities had given up on reuniting the mother and her daughter at too early a stage without adequately demonstrating why reuniting them would not have been in the child’s best interests.

The court held unanimously that the authorities had therefore failed to adequately protect the family life of the woman with her child in line with their obligations under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).

The woman, Nathanie van Slooten, had sole parental authority over her daughter from her birth in August 2014. They lived at several locations in supported housing run by a care provider.

Ms van Slooten and the father of the child agreed with the care provider to meet only under supervision due to a history of domestic violence between them.

However, the parents breached this agreement and further incidents of domestic violence prompted the beginning of an investigation by a Dutch child care and protection board in August 2015.

Eventually, the care provider asked Ms van Slooten to leave as a result of her alleged failure to cooperate with care workers, leading her to move into a crisis shelter.

Because of its concerns about the child’s unstable home environment and her mother’s ability to look after her, the child care and protection board applied to a court for a one-year supervision order, which was granted.

The board subsequently became aware that Ms van Slooten had left the crisis shelter and had some difficulty in making contact with her. It decided to apply for an emergency care order, which was granted in October 2015.

As a result of this order, the child was placed in a foster care institution for a duration of two weeks, with Ms van Slooten allowed supervised contact with her child once per week.

The order was later extended by a children’s judge who found that Ms van Slooten had refused to cooperate with the care and support services, in particular by not accepting their proposal to be admitted to a specific mother-and-child clinic for an assessment of her parenting abilities.

Four months after the emergency care order was imposed, the childcare services informed Ms van Slooten that they considered the child’s future to no longer be with her because of her failure to cooperate.

Ms van Slooten’s challenges to the care order and to have her child returned to her, including her proposal for an alternative assessment of her parenting abilities, were unsuccessful.

In March 2017, the child care and protection board applied for Ms van Slooten’s parental authority to be terminated. In June 2017, a court put an end to her parental authority.

The court found that the acceptable time to work towards reunification had expired and that termination of Ms van Slooten’s parental authority was in the child’s interests to safeguard the stability and continuity of her upbringing by the foster family. It said she would “retain a place in the child’s life, albeit at a distance”.

An appeal by Ms van Slooten was dismissed by the Arnhem-Leeuwarden Court of Appeal and she did not appeal to the Supreme Court of the Netherlands.

In September 2018, she lodged an application with the European Court of Human Rights, relying on Articles 6 (right to a fair trial) and 8 (right to respect for private and family life).

Ms van Slooten complained, in particular, that the termination of her parental authority had been ordered without an investigation into her parenting skills and had been based solely on her child’s doing well with her foster family, and that there had been no fair hearing by an impartial tribunal.

In yesterday’s Chamber judgment, the court noted that the domestic authorities had not carried out an in-depth analysis of the nature of the vulnerability of the child, despite basing its decision to terminate parental authority of Ms van Slooten on the child’s consequent need for stability.

It noted that the various court orders were based mainly on the finding that Ms van Slooten had been “uncooperative” and that all practical attempts to reunite mother and child had already been put to an end by February 2016, a mere four months after the 18-month-old child had been taken into care.

While Ms van Slooten had indeed hampered the progress of the assessment of her parenting abilities by failing on several occasions to cooperate with the authorities, for example by refusing to move to a specific clinic, there were no indications in the file that she was not open to other ways of assessing her parenting ability.

The court observed that Ms van Slooten herself was a vulnerable person who had clearly lost confidence in the care providers. The Dutch authorities should not have given up on reuniting them at such an early stage without adequately demonstrating why that would not have been in the child’s best interests.

As insufficient weight had been attached by the Dutch authorities to protecting Ms van Slooten’s family life with her child, the court held unanimously that had been a violation of Article 8.

The court held that it had already examined the principal legal question with its findings under Article 8, and so there was no need to examine the complaints under Article 6.

The Netherlands was ordered to pay Ms van Slooten €20,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.