Case overview

The local authority (LA) stopped making social care direct payments for a child. When her mother challenged this on her behalf, the LA conducted new social care assessments. The LA had three social care teams: One for child protection issues, one for disabled children and another specifically for short breaks. This child’s case was passed between the teams. Each team’s assessment was that she did not require its services.

Although to be eligible for support from the LA’s “0-25 Disabled Services” team its policy required a child to have a “complex or severe disability” (which it was decided this child didn’t have), the same policy referred to direct payments as a form of support for children with a “moderate disability”.

The child brought a judicial review claim against the LA, alleging that its process for deciding to stop and not restart her social care direct payments was irrational.

The High Court agreed. It concluded that:

• The social care direct payments were not stopped because an assessment concluded that they weren’t necessary but because of each of the three teams’ decisions that the child did not qualify for its services.
• The assessments did not address direct payments expressly, with reasons, and this was a failure of “process rationality” in circumstances where a valuable service had been withdrawn from a child without explanation.
• The LA’s starting point must be to identify the child’s needs and then 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. In this case, the LA had effectively instead asked itself whether the child required the services made by each team, decided she didn’t and therefore didn’t have social care needs. But not being eligible for support from each team didn’t necessarily mean she didn’t require some social care provision funded by direct payments and the LA didn’t consider this.
• The LA “must address the correct questions and not permit its own organisational arrangements to limit the scope of the available answers.”
• The LA ruling out direct payments, the very support that the child had previously received, when its own policy confirmed they were in principle available to her, required proper justification.
• If the LA concludes that the child does not have a need for social care direct payments, it has to say so in terms and give the reasons for that conclusion.

Therefore, the LA’s decisions to terminate and not reinstate the social care direct payments were procedurally irrational. The Court made a mandatory order requiring the LA to carry out a reassessment properly.

The full case report for BDH, R (on the application of) v London Borough of Lambeth [2025] EWHC 2568 (Admin) is available online.

What does this mean?

• When conducting a social care assessment, LAs must first identify any needs the child has before deciding whether it is necessary to provide services to meet those needs.
• An LA’s children’s services department may include various teams but LAs must make sure the assessment of a child’s social care needs is not influenced by the services a team usually provides.
• LAs must make decisions in line with the law and rationally, providing adequate reasons.

For more information on when and how LAs must conduct social care assessments and make social care provision for children, see Level 2 Module 7: Children’s social care law.