September 2025 – Landmark judgment series: pathway plans and personal advisers (High Court judgment)

In this issue, we summarise a leading 2005 High Court judgment concerning the content and quality of pathway plans and the needs assessments which underpin them, as well as the role and functions of personal advisers in the context of needs assessments and pathway plans. This important judgment provided judicial guidance around the level of detail required in a pathway plan, including ensuring that it was specific and detailed, and that the child was engaged in the needs assessment and pathway plan development. It also addressed the imperative of children’s involvement in these processes, and the requirements on local authorities in situations when children struggle or refuse to participate. This judgment, along with the resources signposted at the end, will be essential reading for all advocates supporting looked after children and care leavers.

High Court labels local authority’s pathway plan “hopelessly inadequate” and clarifies the vital role of personal advisers

Background – J’s circumstances

This judgment concerns a 17-year-old boy referred to by the High Court as J.

J experienced very serious trauma within the family home; his experience of abuse brought about drug dependency. At the ages of 10 J received a caution for burglary and then, at the age of 11, a conditional discharge for theft. At the age of 13, J became looked after and, over a period of several years, he was detained in secure accommodation (under section 25 Children Act 1989) multiple times. In 2004, J received a custodial sentence; he was released from Ashfield young offender institution (YOI) in January 2005 (aged 17).

In the judgment, J is described by the High Court as intelligent but with complex needs in relation to literacy and numeracy. J had been previously assessed by a specialist child and adolescent mental health nurse as at risk of institutionalisation. Another assessment concluded J would require “a great deal of support” from both social and specialist drug services.

J’s relationship with the local authority responsible for his care is described in the judgment as “plainly very difficult”, with J himself described as “remarkably uncooperative and unwilling to engage”, regularly missing appointments.

In March 2004 (approximately 4 months before J’s 17^th birthday), Mr S was appointed by the local authority as J’s personal adviser. Records of four subsequent 2004 care review meetings show both local authority’s awareness of the complexity of J’s needs and its continued failure to engage J.

The issues before the High Court

In November 2004, approximately two months before his release from Ashford YOI, J contacted the Howard League for Penal Reform’s advice line. The Howard League contacted the local authority named in J’s care order – J’s ‘corporate parent’ – querying arrangements in preparation for J’s pending release from custody. A few days later, a ‘letter before action’ (a procedural step signalling an intention to start judicial review proceedings) was sent to the local authority. It responded by confirming a needs assessment and a pathway plan for J had been prepared but had not yet been shared with J; both documents were to be “reviewed” by J after his release from custody. The pathway plan, according to the local authority, had been drafted by J’s personal adviser.

Both the needs assessment and the pathway plan for J were “incomplete, unsigned and undated”, and the High Court expressed a view that they hadn’t been prepared until after the Howard League made contact on J’s behalf.

Subsequent, revised versions of J’s needs assessment and pathway plan were “completed” by J’s personal adviser, Mr S. Following a joint care and pathway plan review meeting in early March 2005, the local authority produced another, “formal” revised pathway plan for J. The accompanying “pathway plan review” (a standalone document) was signed by Mr S in his capacity as a ‘leaving care service worker’ while his signature on the pathway plan was in his capacity as J’s personal adviser (the signature of a ‘leaving care service’ representative was missing). Both documents “chronicled [J’s] continued failure and refusal [to engage]”.

On behalf of J, his lawyer raised several issues:

1. The appointment and the role of Mr S as J’s personal adviser;
2. The process underpinning the production of J’s needs assessment and pathway plan;
3. The content of the needs assessment and the pathway plan;
4. The failure by the local authority to provide J with suitable accommodation.

The legal framework

Please note as this judgment concerns a Welsh local authority, only the law applicable across England and Wales has been summarised below. Where the judgment contains an analysis of Welsh legislation and government guidance, current equivalents for England have been signposted. For full details of the legal framework referenced in the judgment, please refer to paragraphs 5-17.

The High Court’s analysis of the complaints raised on J’s behalf

Re. J’s personal adviser

The High Court confirmed that there was nothing in law or in statutory guidance which makes it unlawful or undesirable for the personal adviser to be an officer or an employee of the local authority but it’s important to ensure clarify about the functions of a personal adviser:

“…it is important when a personal adviser attends meetings such as the [looked after child review] that no-one (including the personal adviser) should be left in any doubt as to the capacity in which he is there and the capacity in which he is speaking”. [Paragraph 28]

The statutory functions of personal advisers, as set out in secondary legislation, make clear that the needs assessment is to be undertaken and the pathway plan is to be prepared by someone other than the personal adviser, the High Court confirmed:

“It is not part of the personal adviser’s functions to undertake the statutory assessment or the preparation of the pathway plan, nor should he do so. The Regulations, in my judgement, show that it is not permissible for him to do so. It is in any even undesirable that he should do so. Part of the personal adviser’s role is, in a sense, to be the advocate or representative of the child in the course of the child’s dealings with the local authority…He is, in a sense, a “go-between” the child and the local authority. His vital role and functions are apt to be compromised if he is, at one and the same time, both the author of the local authority’s pathway plan and the person charged with important duties owed to the child in respect of its preparation and implementation”. [Paragraph 30]

In response to J’s lawyer’s arguments that Mr S’s dual role put him in a position of conflict thus obscuring and compromising his function and his professional relationship to J, the High Court agreed.

Re. the assessment of J’s needs (the process by which it was conducted)

While acknowledging the difficulties faced by the local authority due to J’s lack of cooperation and engagement with services, the High Court found several serious failings, i.e.:

• J’s pathway plan should have been completed within 3 months of his 16^th birthday (by September 2003) (regulation 42(1) of the 2010 Regulations) and, instead, the local authority initiated the process in November 2004; J’s personal adviser should have also been appointed when J turned 16 (July 2003), instead the appointment was made in March 2004;
• Attempts to engage J in the needs assessment and the development of the pathway plan were inadequate, and did not follow the requirements set out in secondary legislation (see regulation 42(2)(g)(i) children’s wishes and feelings).

Re. the content of the needs assessment and the pathway plan for J

The High Court referred to both the assessment and the pathway plan as inadequate and unsatisfactory:

“It is, after all, the inadequacy of the assessments – which feed into and form the basis of the pathway plans – which is in large measure the cause of the deficiencies in the pathway plans.” [Paragraph 35]

The High Court analysed the standard pathway plan template used by the local authority, which was divided into thematic parts (e.g., ‘Health & Development’, ‘Education/Training/Employment’, etc). Each part contained the following headings: ‘Identified needs of young person’; ‘Tasks/actions’; ‘Person/s responsible’; ‘Target date’; ‘Desired/planned outcomes’. Additionally, each part asked for ‘Young person/carer views’ and a ‘Contingency plan’.

The High Court noted that an absence of a part dedicated to the financial support to be provided to the young person to meet their accommodation and maintenance needs was a “striking omission” in the local authority’s pathway plan template.

Commenting on the various versions of J’s pathway plan, the High Court concluded:

“The defects and inadequacies of the earlier [versions of the pathway plan] are glaring. Three examples – there are many more – will suffice. The pathway plan contained no action plan for how his identified needs for support in literacy and numeracy might be met after he had left Ashfield; and it contended itself with the anodyne observation that the local authority would “continue to explore accommodation options in preparation for [his] release. It was, as [J’s lawyer says], hopelessly inadequate. It contained little more than vague aspirations. His criticism is…justified: as a plan to promote J’s independence and ensure that he had the necessary support was little more than worthless.” [Paragraph 39]

“The revised plan remains, in my judgment, an inadequate document which fails to meet the requirements of the Regulations…One measure of the pathway plan’s inadequacies is that one would scarcely realise from reading it just how significant J’s needs and problems are. Another telling indicator is its failure, so far as I can see, to identify any truly specialist support for him.” [Paragraph 40]

“The deficiencies in this are all too apparent. Where are the details of the ‘nature and level of personal support’ to be provided to J? Where is the ‘detailed plan’ for J’s education and training? Where are the details of the ‘programme to develop the practical and other social skills necessary for [J] to live independently’? Where are the details of the ‘financial support’ to be provided to him? How are his ‘mental health needs’ to be met? Too often, as can be seen, the answer is that the plan is to arrange an appointment with someone else, or to ‘explore options’, or to ‘develop’ a programme. In no case is the ‘date by which’ any of these actions will be carried out specified. Everything is either to be done ‘ASAP’ or is ‘on going’. There seems in some instances to be a lack of clarity in distinguishing between the plan and the contingency plan. What are identified in [Parts] 1, 3 and 5 as aspects of the contingency plan would seem more appropriately to be required as part of the main plan”. [Paragraph 43]

“A care plan is more than a statement of strategic objectives … A care plan is – or ought to be – a detailed operational plan. Just how detailed will depend upon the circumstances of the particular case. Sometimes a very high level of detail will be essential. But whatever the level of detail which the individual case may call for, any care plan worth its name ought to set out the operational objectives with sufficient detail of the ‘how, who, what and when’ – to enable the care plan itself to be used as a means of checking whether or not those objectives are being met. Nothing less is called for in a pathway plan…” [Paragraph 46]  

Re. J’s lack of cooperation and engagement with the local authority

The Court’s remarks in relation to local authorities’ duties towards children who are described as ‘uncooperative’ or ‘unwilling to engage’ with local authority professionals and/or other agencies are important:

“…The fact that a child is uncooperative and unwilling to engage, or even refuses to engage, is no reason for the local authority not to carry out its obligations under the [Children Act 1989 and secondary legislation]. After all, a disturbed child’s unwillingness to engage with those who are trying to help is often merely a part of the overall problems which justified the local authority’s statutory intervention in the first place. The local authority must do its best. If the local authority is hindered in carrying out its duties … by the child’s lack of engagement then that should be documented, clearly and in detail, in the assessment and the pathway plan… Furthermore, if, as will often be the case, particular components of the pathway plan are dependent for their implementation upon the child’s cooperation and willingness to engage in the process, then that fact should also be spelt out explicitly in the pathway plan… And… where there is reason to fear the child will not be willing to engage, careful thought will need to be given to working out and articulating in appropriately explicit detail the ‘fall-back’ or contingency plan to be included in the pathway plan”. [Paragraphs 56-58]