Public Law Principles underpinning social services decision-making

Public Law Principles underpinning social services decision-making 

- for everyone from new starters to middle and senior management

Aims

The full day course aims to familiarise both Local Authority and NHS integrated care services with a strong public law knowledge base for discharging Care Act and related functions.  

It is taught from a scenario and case based set of materials, allowing for discussion akin to what goes on at Panel or in Quality Assurance meetings.

This is an interactive course. Participants should be ready to contribute from their own experience.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course participants will have developed their knowledge and understanding of the following features of the adult social services role:

• How public law principles and the grounds for judicial review, govern the discharge of Care Act functions
• How knowledge of the case law in the adults’ social services legal framework ‘back catalogue’ facilitates decision-making in tricky scenarios and identification of managerial potential amongst staff
• How to inject professionalism and a knowledge base into one’s staff’s practice
• For those already discharging supervision and strategic functions an insight into how to use these principles for quality assurance and governance

Programme

Including the following topics:

• The basic legal requirement to follow the Guidance;
• Distinguishing powers and discretions from duties, triggered by a professional judgement;
• Identifying the correct decision-maker, under the Care Act and its related statute;
• Acting rationally (with an evidence basis, and not ignoring the evidence basis and by not taking leave of one’s senses;
• Acting fairly – full information and participation rights and stating or giving reasons; not negating a council’s discretion by bias, pre-determination or rigid fettering;
• Not making errors of law about the meaning of the words or duties in the Care Act
• Abiding by Human Rights, properly understood, Articles 3, 8, 5 and 9
• Not discriminating unlawfully
• Not delaying unconscionably
• Participants’ issues and questions.
• Evaluations and close

The course will be delivered by Belinda Schwehr

Belinda is a well-known legal framework expert and trainer, known for her passionate delivery about legal literacy and the need for public sector staff to remain up-to-date in the public law principles which govern their day-to-day work. She was awarded ‘Change Agent in Adult Social Care’ in Care Talk’s 2022 ‘Women Achieving Greatness’ Awards.

She worked as a trainer for public sector staff full time 2003-2018, after practising as a barrister and then as a local government and social care solicitor. In 2018 she founded and has been running CASCAIDr, a specialist legal advice charity with a mission to uphold people’s public law rights.

Belinda’s special area of expertise is the Care Act and its interface with the Mental Capacity Act and the wider legal frameworks underpinning Continuing NHS Healthcare, and s117 of the Mental Health Act. She covers assessment, eligibility, care planning and cuts, choice of accommodation, direct payments, safeguarding, commissioning, charging and complaints. Her publicly available output on the centrality of public law principles is available on YouTube.

She has given oral and written expert evidence to the House of Lords’ Select Committee on the invisibility of social care and to the EHRC’s enquiry on routes for challenge in adult social care. In 2020-21 she provided regular live comment to radio and TV programmes (You and Yours, Today, CoProduceCare and GB News) and appeared regularly on CoProduceCare’s livestream events on the Care Act Easements and the inadequacies of policy and logistics regarding public bodies’ MCA compliance, and support of the care home sector, during Covid-19.

In the previous decade, she worked with ADASS on the lawful delivery of personalisation (Putting People First: a DH initiative). She also supervised, for ADASS, the production by a law firm of an early form of national Commissioning Guidance for councils. In 2007 she was grant funded by the Department of Health to put on a Mental Capacity Act awareness-raising podcast and developed her own e-learning package, one of the earliest of the form attempting to teach professional judgment, which was taken up by 25 authorities for use potentially for 10,000 staff and individuals in each authority. She completed an additional module on DoLS, in 2009, rightly predicting that the Government’s ambiguous guidance as to what constituted deprivation of liberty could not possibly be sufficient to withstand judicial scrutiny.

Includes all course materials and a PDF certificate. Course access details will be emailed direct to delegate(s) upon completion of your booking.  If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to email events@edgetraining.org.uk  or call 07341 277487.