Community Care

What is Community Care?

Brilliant team. Knowledgeable and strategic. Particularly good in cases involving mental incapacity.

– Legal 500 UK (2022)

Community Care law involves challenging the decisions of Social Services and Government where their actions are considered to be unlawful.

Our team provides specialist advice and assistance on a variety of community care issues. Local authorities and government departments have obligations to deliver services including:

• respite and development support both for children in need and their parents
• support or care services to children whether in care or leaving care
• care in the community
• adaptions to the home
• assessments and support services for people with physical or mental health disabilities 
• care home and nursing home assessments and placements
• support with housing and welfare for people in the UK who can not receive public funds
• suitable accommodation for people with disabilities.

What we do

Some people come to us for advice because a service has been cut, or where they feel that the level of support services provided is inadequate for their needs or where no assessment has been completed by Social Services.

We advise people who have been unlawfully detained in immigration detention centres. We also help those who have been served with removal directions secure their release from detention and prevent the removal from taking place.

Our team regularly provides emergency assistance, acting quickly and decisively in compelling local authorities to take immediate action to meet urgent needs. Sometimes this involves issuing Judicial Review proceedings, a court process where a High Court Judge considers whether the local authority has acted rationally and reasonably. Our lawyers often make out-of-hours applications for urgent injunctions to force a local authority to do, or to stop doing, something. 

What we can achieve

We have successfully brought proceedings against the Border Agency, forcing them to provide suitable accommodation to vulnerable homeless families who are obtaining hardship support. 

We have also been successful in numerous challenges of Local Authority Social Services departments, both inside and outside London, compelling them to provide appropriate support, including emergency accommodation and care/support services.  Often our clients have been in a state of crisis suffering with physical/mental illness, street homelessness and destitution. Without the threat of action and taking court proceedings against the government agencies and local government departments, our client’s  circumstances would have been bleak.

Recommendations

This firm is able to offer exceptional expertise in cases which overlap housing, community care, mental capacity and related areas.

– Legal 500 UK (2023)

Legal knowledge and organisation are key skills. Compared to other firms, the level of interaction with the legal technicalities is superior and the quality of documents produced is high level.

– Legal 500 UK (2022)

Funding your case

Where Legal Aid is not available we can offer you competitive hourly rates or fixed fee packages. Click here to find out more.