Care services for children - legal advice

Support services

All sorts of services and support can be made available.

Such services include things like equipment or adaptations to the person’s home to help them get around better. It also includes help and support provided to a person by paid carers or personal assistants to help them cope better and more independently with their disability, and to prompt and encourage as normal a life as can be achieved.

The assessment of a child for these types of services should be done in a reasonable time frame, once such need is recognised.

Children may have learning difficulties from the “mild” to the “severe”, they may in some cases suffer from mental health problems, or from physical health problems, epilepsy and a huge range of potential illnesses.

The local authority has duties to promote the welfare of children in its area – which in practical terms means that they have to assess a child’s needs and make a decision as to whether to offer support. That decision must be properly made, rational and reasonable.

However, in practice, what can start as a simple duty becomes complicated inasmuch as the assessor:-

a) may not assess the needs properly or thoroughly enough
b) may not consider the needs to be of a sufficient level of seriousness to trigger the duty to intervene
c) may delay in assessing the needs to the point where the situation no longer requires help or where the needs have increased or changed
d) may take unlawful account of help being provided by family/friends and informal carers to the extent where it is (wrongly) decided that there is no duty on the state to provide or arrange help

Many people are afraid to ask for help. They may be getting some help and fear that by asking for more they are “biting the hand that feeds them” as we live in times when public authorities are trying to save money at all levels. Or they may fear that by asking for help (instead of saying they can manage), the council may want to put their child into care and they would lose their independence partially or fully.

These concerns are understandable, but the law states that the assessment and arrangement of community care services are legal rights…not merely aspirations or charity.

People should know their rights.

Very often if a public authority makes a decision, it is all too easy to accept the decision – to believe “they must know what they are doing”.

Our experience is that in this area of law there are many, many challenges which can be made to decisions made by Public Authorities, or against delay or inaction by them.

Stephensons has been involved in numerous high profile cases involving community care assessments and service decisions, especially around children and families.