Tag Archive for 'children’s act'

Children Act - housing and education

Published
by
NL
on 17 June 2008
in Housing law
. 0 Comments

C, R (on the application of) v London Borough of Lambeth [2008] EWHC 1230 (Admin) is, in the end, mainly concerned with education, but there is quite a bit of interest to housing people.

The issue was the duties owed to the Claimant under s.23 and s.24 Children Act 1989.

The Claimant had been in care with Lambeth. Shortly before her 18th birthday, Lambeth gave her tenancy of a one bed flat. The next year, after suffering a serious sexual assault at the flat, C left to stay with friends and a former foster mother. In 2207, she was briefly street homeless, before the application for Judicial Review was made. She was accommodated by Lambeth after an interim order.

The judicial review application concerned Lambeth’s failings in three duties to a ‘looked after child’ - housing, community care, education and training.

In the meantime, the claimant turned 21. In view of the ongoing proceedings, Lambeth agreed that if any breach of duty was found, then it would not make an issue of C now being over 21.

Shortly before the substantive hearing, Lambeth accepted a permanent housing duty and a duty to make a community care assessment. The education aspect remained at issue. Lambeth maintained that no education and training duty existed because a course of study had not been identified in a pathway plan that had been adopted before C turned 21. In any case, the pathway plans that had been prepared had not been adopted by the Council.

The Court held, following R(J) v Caerphilly County Borough Council [2005] EWHC 586 Admin; [2005] 2 FLR 860, that the pathway plans that existed had not been properly prepared as they had been prepared by C’s personal advisor. The plan was descriptive rather than establishing proposed courses of action and assistance for C.

The Council’s failure to adopt the plan did not make much of a difference as its evidence was that the plan would have been the same if it had adopted it. The plan requires objective assessment so that all parties can see what it envisages, identify progress or the reasons for the lack of it.

In addition, the plan recognised that the then housing problems had had a major effect on C’s educational aims. C’s difficulties in engaging with the course she had been undertaking were therefore in part due to Lambeth’s failure to accept the housing duty, and also, given C’s mental health difficulties, the failure to undertake a community care assessment.

It was artificial to separate out the educational duty from the housing and community care duty where they were clearly interlinked. C was therefore successful.

Housing for children

Published
by
NL
on 2 March 2008
in Housing law
. 2 Comments

A couple of recent cases concerning local authorities’ duties under s.20 Childrens Act 1989

R (On The Application of M) (Fc) V London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham Appellate Committee [2008] UKHL 14 concerns the varied responsibilities of Social Services and Housing depts. The duties under s.20 Childrens Act towards 16 - 18 year olds are more extensive than those under Housing Act 1996 homelessness provisions. In this case, the 17 year old presented to the housing dept. and was, eventually given temporary accommodation. What the House of Lords found ought to have happened was that, given that there was at least a question of her being a ‘child in need’, she should have been referred for a social services assessment, in line with Guidance. She wasn’t - instead being dealt with wholly by Housing.

Could this be taken to be being looked after under s.20 Childrens Act for the purposes of the continuing care and support under s.23C Childrens Act? This support is only available to those over 18 who have been in care or are a ‘relevant child’ by reason of s.20 care and accommodation having been given.

Baroness Hale says no. Although there are Court of Appeal precedents for taking a local authority’s accommodation of a child as s.20 accommodation, whatever the authority said it was doing, these all only applied to other accommodation by social services departments (Southwark London Borough Council v D [2007] EWCA Civ 182, [2007] 1 FLR 2181; H v Wandsworth London Borough Council [2007] EWHC 1082 (Admin), (2007) 10 CCLR 441; R (S) v Sutton London Borough Council [2007] EWCA Civ 790; and R (L) v Nottinghamshire County Council [2007] EWHC 2364 (Admin).).

What had happened here was a legitimate accommodation of the child under HA 1996, s.188., which could not be deemed to be Childrens Act accommodation, as it was neither unlawful nor a deliberate attempt to avoid a s.20 duty.

Moreover, it is only in unitary authorities that a social service dept and a housing dept are part of the same authority. Elsewhere, a District Council deals with housing and would refer to the County Council social services. One could not hold that these were the same authority, and the situation should not be different between unitary and non-unitary authorities. At para 44:

44.  [...] It is one thing to hold that the actions of a local children’s services authority should be categorised according to what they should have done rather than what they may have thought, whether at the time or in retrospect, that they were doing. It is another thing entirely to hold that the actions of a local housing authority should be categorised according to what the children’s services authority should have done had the case been drawn to their attention at the time. In all of the above cases, the children’s services authority did something as a result of which the child was provided with accommodation. The question was what they had done. In this case, there is no evidence that the children’s services authority did anything at all. It is impossible to read the words ‘a child who is…provided with accommodation by the authority in the exercise of any functions…which are social services functions within the meaning of the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970…’ to include a child who has not been drawn to the attention of the local social services authority or provided with any accommodation or other services by that authority. Once again, had this been a non-metropolitan authority, the housing authority could not have provided accommodation under section 20 and the social services authority could not have provided interim accommodation under section 188. The position cannot be different as between the unitary and the non-unitary authorities.

Whilst on the Childrens Act 1989,  G, R (on the application of) v London Borough of Southwark [2007] EWCA Civ 1506  - permission given to appeal the Judicial Review on the issue of how far a social services assessment is a finding of fact capable of giving rise to a s.20 duty. In this case the Authority does not formally accept the assessment and maintains that only a limited duty under the Housing Act - to assist in finding accommodation - is engaged.

The full hearing should have taken place by now, so the judgment is hopefully imminent.

Worth noting that the Court was prepared to accept an undertaking to accommodate pending trial, without prejudice, by the local authority. The Court was not willing to make an interim order to accommodate, for reasons based apparently on a lack of co-operation from the applicant.