C, R (on the application of) v London Borough of Lambeth

A pathway plan for a former relevant child must do more than record aspirations. It must provide an objective, sufficiently detailed and realistic assessment of the educational or training support required, including appropriate qualifications, milestones and timing. The child’s wishes remain the starting point, but the local authority must provide practical guidance and do its best even where the child is reluctant or unable to engage. Housing and mental-health difficulties may be materially connected with educational progress and must be considered together where the plan records that connection. A failure to formulate a sufficiently rigorous plan cannot be used to argue that no qualifying programme existed. The duty may continue beyond 21 where the statutory conditions are met, although it is not indefinite.

The claimant had been looked after by the defendant local authority and was a former relevant child under the Children Act 1989. Her pathway plans repeatedly identified poor basic literacy and numeracy skills, an interest in childcare or related work, and a need for education or training. They also recorded serious housing and mental-health difficulties, which had prevented her from starting proposed courses.

The authority accepted duties concerning housing and community-care assessment, but disputed any continuing duty concerning education and training. It argued that no programme extending beyond the claimant’s 21st birthday had been set out in a pathway plan, and that an unstarted course could not have been interrupted. The central issue was whether the statutory education and training duty had been discharged or continued under sections 23C(7) and (8).

The application for judicial review was allowed. The authority was required to review the pathway plan, continue appointing a personal adviser and comply with its duty to provide assistance in relation to education or training.

1. Content of a pathway plan. The claimant’s aspirations were the starting point, particularly because she was an adult. But a mere record of a wish to improve basic skills or obtain training was insufficient. The plan required objective assessment, practical detail, a realistic direction, and sufficient urgency to show what qualifications were needed and approximately when they should be obtained.
2. Responsibility for the plan. The plans had been made by the personal adviser rather than adopted by the local authority. That was not a merely formal defect. It contributed to the lack of precision and rigour needed to provide the foundation for the authority’s statutory support duties.
3. Engagement and connected needs. A claimant’s reluctance, inability or failure to engage did not relieve the authority of its statutory obligations. The authority had to do its best. The plans themselves connected the claimant’s housing and mental-health difficulties with her inability to pursue education. It would therefore be artificial to assess the educational and training duties separately from those needs.
4. Continuation beyond 21. Either the proposed basic-skills programme was sufficiently identified to remain an unimplemented programme, or the absence of a sufficiently definite programme resulted from the authority’s failure properly to assess and specify the claimant’s needs. On either analysis, the attempt to terminate the education and training obligation failed. The plans had to be amended to provide rigorous and realistic proposals for training towards a childcare qualification, with support if adult funding proved inadequate.
5. The duty was not unlimited. A failure to proceed promptly and steadily, without adequate justification, could enable the authority to conclude that its obligations had been discharged. The agreed orders required review of the pathway plan within 28 days, continuation of the personal adviser, compliance with section 23C(4)(b), and preservation of the claimant’s anonymity. Costs followed the event.

First-instance judicial review in the Administrative Court. The judgment records earlier permission and interim relief applications but no prior merits decision.