Whether child should be seen to b ‘looked after’
Appeal from an order dismissing the appellant’s claim for judicial review, expressed as a challenge to the failure of Hertfordshire to provide her with support for the care of her grandson who, it was suggested, was a ‘looked after child’ for the purposes of section 20 to 22D of the 1989 Ac. A necessary stepping stone to that conclusion was that it should have appeared to Hertfordshire for the purposes of section 20 of the 1989 Act, that R required accommodation because his mother was no longer able to provide him with it. Had Hertfordshire come to that conclusion and arranged accommodation for him, then after 24 hours R would have become a ‘looked after child’ with the consequence that various obligations upon Hertfordshire would have arisen, including the provision of financial support.
Held: The obligation to provide the support arose only upon the Local Authority seeing that it appeared to them that the child required accomodation. Such an assessment was acutely fact sensitive, and required an established error of public law for a challenge.
A child was not in such need of support only on the basis that accomodation offered was only temporary or stopgap
Black, Burnett LJJ
[2016] EWCA Civ 1108, [2016] WLR(D) 595
Bailii, WLRD
Children Act 1989 20 21 22
England and Wales
Children, Local Government
Updated: 02 November 2021; Ref: scu.571221