The mother and child applied for judicial review of a decision to offer care at home, instead of a residential placement. The decision was informed by the view that moving the child to a boarding school equipped and ready to meet his needs would be detrimental and a last resort.
The court criticised this approach, saying that an assessment was distinct from the production of the care plan, in the light of the assessed needs. The care plan had been, effectively, merely a summary of what had already been included in the assessment. This had contributed to the failure to identify the needs of the mother, the carer, whose main issue was the need to regain control of the child’s behaviour and set boundaries. The core assessment and care plan even when taken together were deficient in identifying clearly what was required to meet the needs. The need for a package of care at home, much of which had still to be identified, was seriously flawed and irrational, so the authority was in breach of its duty under Part IV of the Children’s Act 1989.
Commentary: this case is interesting in relation to what the assessment duty entails, in general, for local authority staff, albeit in the children’s sector: the case says that an assessment of needs is not the same as a care plan. A care plan, to count as such, has to identify what will meet need, not just be a turning round of the needs, and saying that what is needed is whatever meets those needs so that the outcome is that they are met.
I was reading an article from Eleanor Wright today on the Special Needs Jungle, and was moved to check my own judicial review case in 2006. I am MH and my son LH. This judicial review was a turning point for us and I am so grateful still for the tireless work EW did to help us between 2003 and 2006. We did have to go to the educational tribunal after the JR but with the impact of the JR, we won for my son to go to a residential placement in Hampshire at the end of 2006. He was there between 2006 and 2014, and this was the best decision we could have taken.. He thrived in the school, and myself and our family had a chance to recover. LH is now 30 and lives in a community setting. He has a full life, he works and learns, has many friends of all ages and is thankfully in good health.
What the LA had been saying in 2006 was that LH needed to stay in his local community in south London with his family, but he had no community and his ongoing frustrations and medical/learning needs led to many meltdowns/seizures etc. As a family, we were at the point of total exhaustion. LH going to this residential school gave him a positive sense of himself, self-discipline, friendships, learning and social skills and much more. So this decision in 2006 was not as the LA claimed “ detrimental and the last resort”, it’s the total opposite. An emancipation for LH within a very supportive community and for me and LH’s family, the chance to recover and to still be present in his life with regular visits and holidays.