Date of decision: 24 Jul 2025
Summary
A carer complained after Haringey stopped his son’s direct payments and failed to manage the transition from children’s to adult social care support. The individual missed out on care, and support to which he had a legal entitlement, and the carer lost out on opportunities to have a regular break from his caring role.
What happened
A young man with learning disabilities, living with his father as main carer, turned 18 in September 2021. He previously received children’s services direct payments for clubs and activities, managed by his father. In December 2021, a Council Head of Service approved continuation of these payments for two further months, to allow for completion of an adult social care assessment but there was no record of the Council actioning the Head of Service’s decision. The last payment from Children’s Social Care was in August 2021.
In March 2022, an adult social care assessment found him eligible under the Care Act, but because his father and his education placement met his needs, no care and support services or direct payments were provided. [The report does not make clear whether a plan explaining how the eligible needs would be informally met, even though a personal budget was not needed, was ever provided.]
His father had a carer’s assessment in April 2022 which found him eligible for carer support. There was a carer’s support plan in July which set out a one-off payment to be used flexibly for respite provision.
In January 2023 the father asked for his son’s direct payment to be re-instated. The Council took no action until June.
In the same month the father made a complaint to the Council. The Council’s notes said that it referred the young man to the transitions team and stated a new assessment was needed as his education placement was due to end.
The Council’s response to the complaint stated that:
- It was correct for the direct payment from Children’s services to stop when the young man became 18.
- The outcome of the young man’s adult social care assessment was that he was not eligible for support.
- It took ‘some time’ for the adult social care assessment to be completed.
- It was unclear why the father did not receive a reply to the January 2023 letter to the direct payments team, but they would have told him payment stopped when the young man turned eighteen.
- In October 2023, the Council issued a carer’s support plan for the father and granted a further one-off direct payment.
In December 2023, a further assessment concluded the young man was eligible for care and support. The assessment recommended support to access community facilities and his father needed respite from his caring role. Support was recommended by way of a direct payment for the family to employ a personal assistant and that the next step was to create a care and support plan.
At the end of January 2024 the social worker presented the case to the funding panel with a request for 10 hours per week of PA support for the young man and to provide respite for his father, but the funding panel refused. The panel said the panel needed to explore other sources of support like buddies and volunteering. The social worker spoke to the father and told him the panel decision. He was not happy.
The social worker researched the panel’s suggestions and pointed the father towards universal services, including a sitting service and football groups. The social worker then ended their involvement in the case.
In March 2024 the father’s advocate contacted adult social care about the ending of direct payments. There is no record of a response between March and November.
The father complained to the Ombudsman in September 2024. In November 2024 the Council awarded a further carer’s direct payment for the father.
The Council issued a further complaint response in January 2025. They apologised for not having told the father that the direct payment from children’s social care would stop and recited the Council’s view of the history. A further assessment was underway.
In April 2025 the Council issued a care and support plan which set out funding of 10 hours per week to enable the family to buy support from a PA.
The Council failed to complete a child needs assessment before the young man’s 18th birthday, and stopped children’s payments when they should have continued. It delayed assessments for months in the face of changing circumstances, provided inadequate complaint responses, and closed the case without ensuring support was in place, meaning statutory duties were breached and legal entitlements denied at multiple stages.
What was found
Although the complaint was about things which happened over 12 months ago, the Ombudsman did investigate because the young man did not have capacity to bring the complaint, so the legal provision about late complaints did not apply.
The Council was found at fault for breaching statutory duties in the Care Act 2014 and Children Act 1989 by failing to complete timely transition assessment for the man when a child, wrongly ceasing children’s payments, delaying adult assessments, and not ensuring adult support or universal service availability. These failures led to significant distress, confusion, and missed respite for the carer, and loss of activities and support for the individual.
Despite the fact that the young man had been a child with significant learning disabilities, there was a failure to complete a transition assessment before his 18th birthday in breach of Care Act 2014 s58.
The young man’s children’s direct payment stopped when he turned 18, in breach of Care Act 2014 section 17 ZH. The Head of Service told officers the children’s direct payment should continue for two months, but this was not acted upon and was an arbitrary period. The direct payment should have continued until the adult social care assessment process was completed.
There was no fault in the Council’s decision making between April 2022 and July 2023 as the assessment concluded that the father and education placement were meeting the young man’s needs. On balance and relying on written records, it was likely that the father said he did not want respite care for his son although he denied this.
Although the Council noted a fresh assessment was needed in June 2023 as his education was ending shortly, an assessment did not take place until December 2023. The six months period was not reasonable, appropriate or timely where there was a significant change in circumstances and was not in line with the Statutory Guidance.
Councils are entitled to discharge the legal duty to meet eligible needs by identifying universal or targeted preventive services, but it was fault to close the case without ensuring those services were in place and delivering care and support to meet eligible unmet needs. The evidence available indicated that universal services were unsuitable and the young man’s needs remained unmet so the Council had a duty to meet them. The young man had a loss of entitlement to regular support to access the community between January 2024 and April 2025.
The Council’s complaint responses failed to identify key areas of fault and injustice, and the first response wrongly said he was not eligible for adult services. The complaint response did not provide an adequate remedy. This caused the father avoidable confusion.
The Ombudsman told the Council to issue an apology to the young man and his father, pay £750 to the father and £3000 to the individual, to reflect the avoidable distress, frustration, confusion and loss of services identified and to take into account lost social care provision between September 2021 and March 2022, and between January 2024 and April 2025.
The Council was told to review procedures in children’s social care services to ensure children receiving section 17 provision who appear to be in need of adult care and support are identified and receive transition assessments in a timely manner (meaning in good time before their 18th birthday.
The Council was also to issue a briefing note to relevant staff to ensure services provided under section 17 of the Children Act do not end at a child’s 18th birthday where they are likely to be entitled to adult social care and support and have not yet had an adult social care assessment.
Points to note for councils, professionals, people using services and their carers, advocacy groups and members of the public
This LGSCO decision found fault across the transition process and ordered financial redress and service improvement. The report is critical of the Council’s processes and application of the law.
Under the Care Act, a local authority has a duty in certain circumstances to carry out a young person’s transition assessment well in advance of a young person turning 18, and any failure to do so before the cessation of children’s services is not simply poor practice, but amounts to a serious breach of statutory functions. ‘Smooth transition’ is a legal obligation, not just a stated ambition or best practice marker. The requirement is to conduct the assessment, supply information in accessible form, and ensure that there is no gap in support due to delays in assessment, funding, or care planning. Importantly, where a young person is likely to have needs for adult services at 18, the authority must ensure that there is no unlawful discontinuity of support.
Eligibility for adult care is not dependent on whether needs are being met informally by family, but on inability to achieve across two or more of the eligibility domains and significant impact on wellbeing. Councils are legally required to assess the total extent of need, ignoring the presence of willing carers at the eligibility stage. Similarly, where the child or carer seeks a direct payment, it is unlawful for the council to operate blanket refusals or to signpost only to universal services without exploring and recording their suitability for these specific needs. It is a matter of public law that options must be meaningfully explored and justified in the plan itself, with recorded reasons, and not simply rejected by reference to panel policy or resource limitations. Case law confirms that signposting to universal services is unlawful if they are not rationally realistically available, accessible or appropriate for meeting needs (Westminster). This was a public law point which could have been spelt out more clearly. We would add that it is not enough that there are other services that COULD meet need – the cost is not something that a Council can tell a person to meet for themselves. The investigator said that “While councils are entitled to discharge the legal duty to meet eligible needs by arranging universal or general services, it was fault of the Council to close Mr Y’s case without ensuring those universal services were in place and actually delivering care and support to meet eligible unmet needs. The evidence available indicates universal services were unsuitable, could not meet needs or had no places available. Paragraph 10.25 of Care and Support Statutory Guidance stresses the duty to meet eligible needs is not discharged just because a person is entitled to a different service which could meet needs.”
If informal support arrangements are later considered as offsetting unmet eligible needs, that must be transparently recorded and only taken into account during the care planning stage, not at the eligibility or assessment stage.
The report does not tell us whether any reasons for the panel decision to decline the funding for ten hours support were given in January 2024 as opposed to justifying its existence by getting the social worker to investigate further options. If they were not that failure could have given rise to a public law challenge, as could other aspects of this case. In reality though the father might not have mounted any legal challenge without legal advice which would probably have been hard for him to find. At least he did have an advocate at one stage, however – the delays and inadequacies in the complaints process, although it does seem to have finally produced a result, contributed to the situation where the son had lengthy periods without care and support, and the father without respite.
The broader implication for practitioners and decision-makers is that a lawful transition process is not achieved simply by an eventual assessment and apology, but by proactive, joined-up planning that secures uninterrupted support and rigorous adherence to due legal process.
Councils should ensure all transition assessments are started well in advance, continue payments unless and until an explicit, justified and lawful adult care plan is agreed, and document the specific legal basis for all eligibility and care planning decisions. They should also strengthen advocacy access at all transition stages, ensure all decisions are accompanied by reasons, and rigorously audit panel decisions for lawful justification and transparency.
Please use the following link if you want to read the original Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s London Borough of Haringey (23 013 847) report. If you are affected by the issues in this report, please consider asking a free, one-off question, anonymously, at a level of principle, here. Our experts’ response will give you an opinion which may then help you and the broader community, when posted.
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