Duty to Assess
Before going on to consider the legal basis for providing support, we will look at the Local Authority's duty to assess the need for care and from where that arises.
This duty arises from different Statutory provisions depending on the circumstances
Each of the above provisions creates a duty which the Local Authority must fulfil. In each case we can describe this as 'the duty to assess'. However, what is not as clear, is the duties that arise once the a need for care has been assessed or how any such duties should be discharged.
The 2013 Act gives us some help, in that it establishes statutory and good practice principles relevant both to assessment and to provision of support.
Furthermore it creates new duties in relation to how both the process of assessment and interaction with those being assessed or their representatives.
We will look at these principles in more detail in the next section.