Held, interim hearing resolved with consent. The management of challenging cases concerning profoundly disabled children did not sit comfortably or entirely appropriately within the scope of Part IV of the Children Act 1989. Legal proceedings often made a very limited contribution to the resolution of cases involving a breakdown of relationships between parents, local authorities and the other parties concerned with the welfare of severely disabled children and a functional family unit, provided it was in fact functional and able to meet the welfare needs of the child to a sufficient degree, was of central importance to the care of such children because it was often the only fixed point in their otherwise changing care provisions. In the present case the analysis of the expert psychologist that, rather than looking to change the parents, a systemic intervention drawn from organisational psychology and systems theory resonated clearly with the applicable legal framework within the 1989 Act. In particular, it was important to emphasise that the reference in section 31(2)(b) of the 1989 Act to care “not being what it would be reasonable to expect a parent to give” was not to be regarded as an abstract or hypothetical test but was to be evaluated by reference to the circumstances the parent was confronting (ie what would it have been reasonable to expect of a parent in those particular circumstances) recognising that in a challenging situation many of us might behave in a way which might not objectively be viewed as reasonable. The test was not to be construed in a vacuum nor applied judgementally by reference to some gold standard of parenting which few (if any) could achieve. On the contrary, it contemplated a range of behaviours incorporating inevitable human frailty. The reasonableness of the care given had to be evaluated strictly by reference to the particular circumstances and the individual child (paras 6–9, 16, 18, 19).