Ollie Persey of Garden Court Chambers acted for the successful Claimant, instructed by Lucy Atherton of Irwin Mitchell LLP.
Georgia Wake of Simpson Millar LLP and Sarah Woosey of Education Law Experts acted for the Claimant at earlier stages of proceedings.
The High Court has ordered the London Borough of Lambeth to reassess a disabled child’s social care needs after finding that its decision to terminate her social care direct payments was unlawful because of process irrationality.
Background
The Claimant is a 15-year-old girl with autism spectrum condition, social anxiety disorder, disruptive mood dysregulation, oppositional defiance disorder and premenstrual dysphoric disorder. She has faced serious mental health challenges, resulting in self-harm and attempts on her own life.
She also experienced significant trauma following the death of her brother in a road traffic accident. Her mental health, and that of her litigation friend and mother, have deteriorated significantly.
The Defendant terminated the Claimant’s social care direct payments, which had been used to fund a carer to support the Claimant.
High Court Proceedings
Following a final hearing in the Claimant’s claim for judicial review, on 10 October 2025, the High Court held that the Defendant’s decision was unlawful because of process irrationality.
The payments were ended due to a decision that the Claimant did not meet the threshold for a particular team within the Defendant’s Children’s Social Care Department. The Claimant, and the Claimant’s social worker, had not realised that this meant the direct payments would stop.
The Judge noted that it seemed most likely that the social worker “did not appreciate that the direct payments were to be ended” just because the Claimant was being moved out of a particular team.
The Court held at para 47 that the “essential problem is that the termination of the social care direct payments was the result not of an assessment that the claimant did not need the provision of social care but rather of the decisions by each of the three teams within the [Children’s Social Care Department] that the claimant did not qualify for its services.”
That reasoning had carried through from an initial decision in September 2024 through two further Child and Family Assessments (‘CFAs’). The Court continued that each CFA “begins by acknowledging that the assessment is required because of the dispute about the termination of direct payments for social care, but thereafter they do not actually address directly the question of direct payments but rather deal with it by not mentioning it as a potential option. This is not merely a matter of placing an interpretation on silence; though I regard the failure to address the matter expressly, with reasons, as a failure of process rationality in circumstances where a valuable service had been withdrawn from the claimant without explanation.”
At para 48 of its judgment, the Court held that the Defendant’s approach was unlawful:
“The starting point for the defendant must be to identify the claimant’s needs and then to ask whether it is necessary to make arrangements for the provision of any of the services listed in section 2(6) of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970. The defendant’s approach, however, has been to ask, in effect, whether the claimant requires the particular services provided by the [Children with Disabilities] team (which she does not, because she has only moderate but not severe disability) or by the [Family Support and Child Protection] team (which she does not, because there are no safeguarding concerns over her) or by the Short Breaks team (which she does not, because “short breaks are for young people who have profound and complex needs and require additional support in the community to complete day to day skills of daily living”: see para 19 above); and, when the answer to that question is negative, to conclude that the claimant has no social care needs (as distinct from needs that can be met by special educational provision or by mental health services). But what if, though not eligible for the services available for children with serious disability, the claimant needs a measure of social care funded by direct payments? The defendant’s approach simply precludes that question. The consequence is illustrated by the way in which direct payments were terminated in September 2024 (contrary, it seems, to the expectation of the social worker with responsibility for the claimant) and by the failure of the two recent CFAs to deal expressly with the question of direct payments.”
The Court allowed the claim for judicial review and granted a mandatory order requiring reassessment of the Claimant’s social care needs.
