by Amy Taylor
From October 1st last year no legal aid funding has been available for placements in family assessment centres - used when care proceedings have begun to assess parents' parenting ability. This means that such placements now have to be solely funded by councils.
The repercussions of this are now starting to show.
Earlier this year a case arose in which a judge ordered for such a placment to take place only to be told that, due to the new rules, no legal aid funding was available and the council was unable to afford it.
The court in effect forced the council to fund the placement but it obviously felt uncomfortable in doing so. It also recognised the local authority's call for the issue to be flagged up as a major problem which will not go away - it alone having two other similar cases in the pipeline.
The judge himself concluded: "This case demonstrates an urgent need for further consideration of funding of residential assessments...It is unsatisfactory if not invidious that courts charged with taking serious and sensitive decisions about children, where an under-informed decision could on occasion spell disaster, should have to choose between (a) overburdening an already over-stretched local authority or (b) denying a residential assessment to a parent for whom it represents the only hope of avoiding the loss of his or her child to adoption. "
This situation is not fair. Parents who require residential assessments should be provided with them without courts having to fight tooth and nail to get councils to pay for them. It is not the local authorities' fault, far from it for they have received no extra funding to take on this burden, the blame lies firmly at the government's door.
Lawyers are now predicting challenges to the legal aid funding rules on human rights grounds. But some have raised the point that by the time such a case gets to the European Court a child may have already been removed. This means parents would have to take the case for the benefit of others - a pretty tall order.
A further reason behind a drop in assessments is councils instead opting to put parents and children with foster carers for assessment - a much cheaper option.
As a result of all of this residential assessment settings are experieincing a dramatic drop in referrals. Two well respected institutions: The Cassel Hospitalhttp://www.thecasselhospital.org in Richmond, Surrey and Symbol (UK) Ltd in Snodland, Kent have been greatly affected.
As the judge said this situation must be addressed.
Unfortunately the case tag does not seem to work, as I would be interested to read the case.
My own understanding of s38(6) is that the court would have difficulty ordering a LA to pay all of the costs of such an assessment.
The court can only order the LA to undertake 'assessments' under s38(6), and the principles on which the costs of such 'assesments' will be funded is established by the Calderdale case. It would be appealable for a court to apportion costs other than in accordance with that case.
Alternatively if the court finds that some of the placement amounts to therapy rather than assesment it has no power to order that part of the placement under s38(6).
Invariably a placement in a residential unit is both assessment and therapy. Further it is often therapy for the child and parents. Children social services teams should carefully consider then, whether 'therapy for parents' is something that they should be funding or whther that may be more appropriately funded by another department, perhaps the health trust.
Hi Matt
Thanks for your comment. I've fixed the link so it should work now.
Simeon