Care needs in hard times

Increasingly, local authorities are having to take hard decisions about the provision of community care services. The Court of Appeal’s decision in R (McDonald) v Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea [2010] EWCA Civ 1109, in which it determined a judicial review claim at first instance, is the latest to confirm that it is for an authority to decide how it deploys its community care resources. In other words, the hard decisions are essentially for local authorities to take and not the courts. Accordingly, an authority was entitled to decide to meet an eligible community care need for assistance safely to urinate at night by supplying continence pads rather than the more expensive option of funding a night carer (R v Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council ex parte Daykin [1998] 1 CCLR 512).

Other aspects of the Court of Appeal’s decision are also of note. The court held that if a local authority has decided precisely to define an eligible need