It’s not just ‘Hywel Dda’ BUT …: secret court hearings.
There appears to be little research concerning the prevalence and impact of ex parte (ie secret) hearings in the Family Law courts and in the Court of Protection: hearings that consider whether a disabled person (child or adult) should be removed from their home. Where such an order is granted, the first that the disabled person (and their family) learn of the decision is when social workers / medics / the police come to their home to execute the secret order.
There may be rare cases where such action is essential – but the courts have stressed that orders of this kind require ‘exceptional justification’, ‘extraordinarily compelling reasons’ and that the individual must be in ‘imminent danger’ – which must be ‘actually established’ by the evidence.[1] We do not (or ‘we should not’) live in a society where the state can routinely march into our homes and remove loved ones (or – for that matter – arrest us[2]).
There is evidence that applications are being made to courts in cases where the available facts do not justify such extreme action. Cases where, for example, the public body withholds key evidence from the court, or where the evidence it provides is simply wrong (eg it concerns a different person) or where the evidence does not withstand scrutiny eg evidence of a ‘flight risk’ (that the person will go into hiding if aware of the application) and so on.
Inappropriate applications of this kind are encountered in each of the UK’s jurisdictions, but reported and unreported cases appear to me, to be cropping up with a frequency that is of concern,[3] not least in Wales, These can generally be characterised as cases where the public body is failing to listen to, and work constructively with, the disabled person and their family.
An earlier post,[4] for example concerned the case of Cwm Taf Morgannwg Health Board v. AB[5] where an ex parte application was made to authorise the artificial feeding of a patient. A case where, in the view of the judge, a ‘lack of common sense thinking appears to have permitted a disregard for the humanity of those involved’.
Professor Celia Kitzinger, of the excellent Open Justice in the Court of Protection (OJCP) Project, has posted a hard hitting account of another such case – ‘Systems-generated trauma and closed proceedings’. It concerns an application by the Hywel Dda University Health Board to the Court of Protection[6] for an order to remove an autistic young adult from the family home without notice to the family and using force if necessary.
As Professor Kitzinger comments, it is ‘yet another case of institutional failure resulting in complex trauma for an autistic young woman and her mother. The failing institutions in this case include the court – though they did put it right in the end.’ Indeed, until Mrs Justice Morgan’s decisive intervention in July 2024, it appears that several senior judges had made orders that hearings should be ‘without notice’ to the young adult’s mother, relying on the assertions by the Health Board that if she knew of the proceedings she would abscond with her daughter.
Professor Kitzinger’s article is important and should be read in full – not least its reasoned concerns about aspects of the way the Court of Protection operates. She was in touch with the young woman’s mother as part of her role in the OJCP Project and the insights she provides in this respect are incredibly valuable and distressing. This includes the following extract:
She feels betrayed by the Health Board that attempted to get an order to remove P (by force and without notice) from the family home, and haunted by the thought of the lasting damage it would have caused her daughter if an application she was powerless to respond to had succeeded in her absence. She lives with the terror of what might have happened, and the fear that there are still people out there who want to remove her daughter and might try the same thing again. A year later, she says “I’m scared and traumatised by what happened, and the fact it could have been so much worse is something I can’t stop thinking about”.
Professor Kitzinger’s posting can be accessed by clicking here.
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[1] X Council v B and others [2004] EWHC 2015 (Fam) para 57.
[2] – see Police review couple’s arrest in school WhatsApp row and https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gz1qy30v5o
[3] A concern echoed by the Open Justice Court of Protection Project, see footnote 6 to the posting ‘Systems-generated trauma and closed proceedings: Hywel Dda University Health Board v P & Anor [2024] EWCOP 70 (T3).
[4] A disregard for the humanity (July 18, 2025).
[5] [2025] EWCOP 24 (T3).
[6] Hywel Dda University Health Board v P & Anor [2024] EWCOP 70 (T3).
Photograph of ‘Ffordd y Chwarel’ by Richard Jones -@lluniaurich
Posted 29 December 2025