The test for ordering an assessment

In re G (a child) (interim care order: residential assessment) CA TLR 29 January

When considering applications for assessments in care proceedings, the question always is whether what was sought could be broadly classified as an assessment to enable the court to obtain the information necessary for its own decision. The court should not seek to draw a distinction between assessment and therapy because permissible assessments which enable the court to obtain such information could well contain the provision of a variety of services, supports and treatments, with or without accommodation. Accordingly, where the parents and the child had been in a residential assessment, which had been extended, the judge was wrong to refuse a further extension on the grounds that he had no jurisdiction to do so under s38(6) of the Children Act 1989 because the assessment had become therapy rather than assessment. The subsection conferred jurisdiction on the court to order or prohibit any assessment which involved the participation of the child and was directed to providing the court with the material, which, in the Court’s view, was required to enable it to reach a proper decision at the final hearing of the application for a care order. The court should take into account the costs of the proposed assessment and local authority resources. Applications would fail if what was proposed did not achieve the acquisition of information necessary to the court for its own decision; if the child were only peripherally involved; if the proposal was for a bare treatment programme for one or both parents; or if the cost had been established to be prohibitive. The perspective had to always be that of the court rather than the family.