CHILD IN NEED

A child in need is a child who is thought to need extra help from children’s services if they are to achieve or maintain ‘a reasonable standard of health or development’. All disabled children are classed as children in need.

Children’s services should carry out a child in need assessment to:

Work out whether a child is in need
Decide whether the child is in need enough to get services in that local area, and
Find out what extra support and services may most help the child and their family.
Assessment of children in need
There is a specific requirement for an assessment of a child in need in order to decide what services should be provided under the Children Act.[5]
An assessment must take into account all the child's needs (including accommodation), assess the further support the child needs and be kept up-to-date when the child's circumstances change. This requires a reassessment.

The authority must carry out full and proper inquiries, and show procedural fairness when performing any reassessment. It may also be possible to challenge an assessment if it does not consider the impact of a failure to provide services and/or accommodation on a child's health or development.[6]
Where applicable, the assessment must consider needs resulting from the child being the victim of human trafficking or being an unaccompanied asylum-seeking child.[7] Being at risk of radicalisation should be included in the range of factors relating to a child's welfare, and if they are a child in need.[8]
Statutory Guidance on accommodation for 16 and 17 year olds stresses that timely assessment is a vital element in achieving quality of outcome for the child. It states that, following a request for services under the Children Act:[9]
a decision on the type of response that is required and acknowledgement of the referral must be made within one working day of the request being made

the assessment must be completed within 45 working days from the point of referral; if this time is exceeded the reasons must be recorded

A local authority must comply with the guidance. Failure to comply is unlawful, except in exceptional circumstances.[10] Statutory guidance also requires each local authority to publish a 'threshold document' in which the process and criteria for assessment are set out.[11]
An assessment is also unlawful if reaches a conclusion that no reasonable authority could have reached. In one case, social services made a referral to a specialist family support service after identifying that the child had responsibilities beyond those appropriate for her age and concluded its assessment without waiting for the outcome. The High Court found the assessment to be unlawful.[12]