Roma children at centre of Leeds unrest returned to extended family

Roma children who were taken into care, sparking unrest in Leeds last week, have been returned to their extended family.

Police and social services removed the four children from a house in Harehills on Thursday to prevent them being taken abroad in breach of a court order. The children, aged between eight and 14, had been living with family members since being removed from their parents in April, the family court in Leeds heard on Tuesday.

Leeds city council said social workers had been tipped off that there was a plan to take them to either Romania or Cyprus, contrary to a court order stating they could not leave the UK without permission from the local authority.

After an assessment by social services on Monday, Judge Helen Trotter-Jackson ruled that the children, who cannot be named for legal reasons, could be looked after by extended family 20 minutes’ walk away from their parents.

Relatives at Leeds family court were asked to avoid sharing details of the case on social media and to not take part in public celebrations, amid concerns from the council about the profile of the case.

After the ruling, the children’s mother said through her advocate: “I’m glad the children are back with the family.”

The court heard the children had been “extremely upset” in their emergency foster placement since Thursday and had not settled. They had been kept together but with carers who were not “culturally matched”.

Trotter-Jackson urged the parties involved to put the interests of the children above everything else. “It’s important that everyone focuses on the children’s welfare and taking the temperature down in this case,” she said.

She had been told of the father’s threats to go on hunger strike and allegations that members of the Roma community said they would cause further unrest if the children were not returned.

“This court will simply not take threats like that into account because our paramount concern is for the welfare of those children and it seems to me if those statements were made, they were not helpful. I would ask everyone to be mindful of their behaviour and put the children first,” she said.

She called for calm, adding: “We cannot have the children being upset in the way they were on Thursday.”

Social media posts, including from the far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, suggesting thousands of Roma people would be gathering in Harehills to cause further unrest, led to delays to court proceedings.

Police said 20 people had been arrested after the events on Thursday night in which a police car was flipped on its side and a double-decker bus set on fire. They said 17 of the arrests were directly related to the night’s disorder and three were “because of other issues within the area”.

The court heard how the family, whose situation triggered the upheaval, had had no dealings with social services until April, when a seven-month-old baby at the house received an unexplained skull fracture.

The parents and grandparents, who lived at the same address, were arrested and later bailed, trigging care proceedings for all the children in the house. Later, a child in the family came forward claiming she had dropped the baby by accident and had not told any adults, court documents revealed.

There will be a further hearing in August to decide a more permanent solution for the children’s care.