Published on 30 June 2025
FOURTH SECTION
Application no. 24079/23
Alena OBOUCHOVSKAJA
against the Netherlands
lodged on 8 June 2023
communicated on 11 June 2025
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the decision to terminate the applicant’s parental authority (ouderlijke macht) over her son.
In November 2018 the applicant was diagnosed with the pregnancy complication HELLP syndrome, and her son was born via emergency caesarean. Because the applicant required intensive medical treatment immediately after giving birth and there were no relatives who could take care of her baby, she agreed to a placement of her son in emergency foster care.
In February 2019 the children’s judge issued a supervision order and a care order (ondertoezichtstelling and uithuisplaatsing). The applicant agreed to placement in a mother-baby home. However, during her stay there – which lasted from 14 March 2019 to 31 July 2019 – the relationship between the applicant and the care providers became very strained. The childcare authorities applied to the Regional Court for an emergency care order (spoeduithuisplaatsing) which was granted on 30 July 2019 and the applicant’s son was moved back into foster care. The applicant was allowed to have supervised contact with her son for one hour per month.
Both the supervision order and the care order were extended. During the extension proceedings, in August 2019, care providers informed the children’s judge that they considered that the child’s future no longer lay with the applicant but with a foster family.
In the beginning of 2020, an investigation was initiated into the question whether termination of parental authority would be an appropriate measure. In its report of 5 August 2020, the Child Care Protection Board concluded that it was in the child’s interest to remain with the foster family.
On 26 May 2021 the Regional Court granted the childcare authorities’ request to terminate the applicant’s parental authority because of the applicant’s lacking parenting abilities and the expiry of the acceptable term (aanvaardbare termijn) for the child to cope with uncertainties regarding his family situation. The court considered that the termination of parental authority was in the child’s best interest in order to safeguard the stability and continuity of the situation in which the latter was being brought up.
This decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal on 12 April 2022. The court considered that, in the past, the mother had not been able to adequately connect with her son and had not benefited sufficiently from the assistance provided by the mother-baby home. It accepted the applicant’s argument that in recent years there had been no re-examination of whether her son could be reunited with her and what help would be needed to achieve that aim. The court noted, however, that in view of the child’s young age and the associated short period of time considered acceptable for the child to cope with uncertainties, the childcare authorities had decided in January 2020 – six months after he had been placed into care – that the child’s perspective was with the foster family and that assistance aimed at reunification would have been contrary to this aim.
The decision to terminate the applicant’s parental authority became final by judgment of the Supreme Court of 10 February 2023.
The applicant complains under Articles 6 and 8 of the Convention that there had been no recent examination of her parenting capacities when her parental authority was terminated and that no sufficient efforts were made at reuniting her with her son after he was taken into care in July 2019.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Did the decision to terminate the applicant’s parental authority over her son constitute a violation of her right to respect for her family life, contrary to Article 8 of the Convention (see, amongst other authorities, Strand Lobben and Others v. Norway [GC], no. 37283/13, §§ 202-213, 10 September 2019)?
2. Was the decision to terminate the applicant’s parental authority based on an adequate examination of her parenting capacities, in accordance with the requirements under Articles 6 and 8 of the Convention?