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Our Services: Support for Care Leavers – Community Care

For most young people who have been in care or were looked after by social services prior to turning 18, local authorities will continue to owe important duties after they turn 18. These are often referred to as "leaving care" duties.

Planning for the future

Most importantly, this will involve helping the young person to plan for the future, including important issues like:

• education
• employment
• obtaining stable accommodation, and
• ensuring they have adequate financial support.

Local Authority Assessments – Pathway Plan

The local authority must carry out an assessment and set out clearly the young person’s plan for the future in a document called a pathway plan.

These obligations will usually start well before the young person turns 18 and will include duties to help the young person make the transition from being a child to an adult and any changes in their living arrangements that this may involve.

The local authority must also provide the young person with a personal adviser who supports them with the pathway planning process. This person must be different to and separate from the social worker and is there to support the young person in putting their views across about the pathway plan.

These leaving care duties can include a duty to provide accommodation and financial support to the young person in situations where their welfare requires it, such as when the young person is not eligible for council housing or unable to claim benefits or when they are in full-time education.

The local authority must continue to provide this support until the young person turns 21, or 24, if they remain in education.

How our Community Care Team can Help

We have found that local authorities are often very reluctant to fulfill their obligations to young people in this category and we have a very experienced team of lawyers who are able to ensure that the young person gets the support that they need to make that important transition to adulthood and to be able to fulfill their goals in life.

We welcome enquiries from young people and parents as well as support groups and charities.

Funding

These types of cases can almost always be run using legal aid which we will apply for on the young person’s behalf.

To find out more about our community care services, please contact us.