Unaccompanied children seeking asylum - provision by local authority up to age of 18 - local authority also under duty to provide after care

R (Behre and Others) v Hillingdon London Borough Council: QBD (Admin) (Mr Justice Sullivan): 29 August 2003

The claimants were provided with accommodation and a range of other services by the local authority when they entered the UK as unaccompanied asylum seeking children.

When they reached 18, the local authority claimed it had no further responsibility towards them.

The claimants argued that the local authority had a duty of after care towards them under the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000, because they were 'former relevant children' who had been 'eligible children' because they had been 'looked after' by the local authority for the requisite period at the requisite age, within the meaning of the Children Act 1989.

The secretary of state was joined to the proceedings as an interested party.

Jan Luba QC and Nadine Finch (instructed by Hereward & Foster) for the claimants; Allan Levy QC and Jeremy Rosenblatt (instructed by Raj Alajh, Hillingdon London Borough Council legal services) for the defendant; Steven Kovats (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) for the interested party.

Held, granting the claim for judicial review, that the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000, introduced a very detailed 'after care' code and those entitled to benefit under the code were carefully defined in a detailed legislative scheme; that where the Children Act 1989 specified a 13-week period in section 19B(2), that period commenced any time after the child attained 14 years of age and had to end after the child had reached 16, and there was no scope for reading into the section a requirement that the 13-week period had to commence before the child was 16; that furthermore, 'looked after' in the context of the Children Act 1989, was a term of art, and whether the local authority had acted under section 17 or under section 20 of that Act in providing for the children, it had actually provided each claimant with housing provision as well as a range of other services, and it did not do the statutory language, or policy underlying the statute, any violence to say that the claimants were being 'looked after' by the local authority; that therefore, the children had been eligible children while being assisted by the local authority and were former relevant children for whom the local authority had a duty to provide under the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000.