All the key ‘sufficiency’ duties for disabled children and young people

by stevebroach

When looking a public bodies’ proposals to cut funding, one of the key legal questions which arises is whether there is a ‘sufficiency’ duty in the relevant area. I thought it might be helpful if I set out all the key sufficiency duties for disabled children and young people in one place, so here goes:

1. Education and care provision for disabled children and young people – section 27 of the Children and Families Act 2004 states that as well as keeping education and care provision under review, local authorities must ‘consider the extent to which the provision…is sufficient to meet the educational needs, training needs and social care needs of the children and young people concerned’. In considering this local authorities have to consult with (amongst others) children, young people and parents. Section 27 is therefore likely to be important in any case involving cuts to education or care services for children and young people.
2. Adult social care services – section 5 of the Care Act 2014 is often described as the ‘market shaping’ duty on local authorities. However as well as generally promoting an effective market in services, every local authority must ‘also have regard to the need to ensure that sufficient services are available for meeting the needs for care and support of adults in its area and the needs for support of carers in its area.’
3. Short breaks – regulation 4 of the Breaks for Carers of Disabled Children Regulations 2011 requires local authorities to provide ‘so far as is reasonably practicable, a range of services which is sufficient to assist carers to continue to provide care or to do so more effectively.’ This is a key duty in relation to the provision of short breaks.
4. Childcare – section 6 of the Childcare Act 2006 mandates that local authorities must provide ‘secure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the provision of childcare (whether or not by them) is sufficient to meet the requirements of parents in their area who require childcare in order to enable them to [work or study]’. This requirement extends up to 18 in relation to childcare for disabled children.
5. Children’s Centres – section 5A of the Childcare Act 2006 states that childcare arrangements must ‘must, so far as is reasonably practicable, include arrangements for sufficient provision of children’s centres to meet local need.’ These have to be physical centres, as per the definition in sub-section 4. This is why it would be very unlikely to be lawful for a local authority to decide to close all its children’s centres.

It is obvious that all of these duties are subject to important qualifications. The first two duties listed above are ‘regard’ duties, which require local authorities to ‘think about’ the need for sufficiency rather than actually achieve sufficiency. The final three duties are focused more on outcomes, but are qualified by reference to reasonable practicability. This means that local authorities can take account of their own resources when deciding what level of provision to make. However in my view it is clear that when contemplating cuts in these areas local authorities must understand the level of demand for a particular service and assess the extent to which the remaining service will be sufficient to meet local needs if the cut is to be made lawfully. Very often in my experience this fundamental requirement of lawful decision making is not met. Those who have concerns about cuts in their area which may breach one or more of these sufficiency duties will need to get advice ASAP.

No doubt there are other important sufficiency duties for disabled children and young people than those listed above – suggestions for other duties to include in this post are welcome using the comments below.