TWO children have been taken from the care of their parents after a family court judge said "kisses and cuddles are not enough".

Judge Martin Dancey, sitting in Bournemouth, has concluded that the 35-year-old woman and her 59-year-old husband are not able to meet the needs of the youngsters - a girl aged three and a boy who is approaching his first birthday.

The judge said the couple loved their children "very much indeed" and said the woman had "done everything she possibly could" to look after them.

However, he said the youngsters needed more than "kisses and cuddles" - and concluded that both must be placed for adoption.

Detail of the case have emerged in a ruling by Judge Dancey following a private family court hearing.

None of the individuals or agencies involved have been identified.

The children's mother is partly deaf and has a "mild learning disability". Her husband is her carer. Both have suffered with depression.

Social services workers had raised concern about the couple's "cluttered and unhygienic" home, child supervision and "inadequate" basic care.

Judge Dancey said the two children needed "attuned parenting".

"Kisses and cuddles are not enough," he said.

"Those, they got.

"What they did not have was attuned parenting sensitive to their needs."

Judge Dancey also raised a number of concerns about the council involved.

He said the authority, which was not named in the ruling, did not have a protocol for dealing with parents with learning disabilities. There had also not been enough focus on a strategy aimed at keeping the family together, and the family had been visited by five different social workers, he added.