PURE Adult Social Care

when a local authority makes a decision – including about a person with additional needs and the resources or care and treatment they do or do not need – that decision is automatically infused with an ‘assumption of correctness’.

this means that the decision, which trumps all others, is immediately assumed to be the correct decsion. also, that that decision has been made in an appropriate manner after due consideration of all relevant materials.

an ‘appropriate manner’ includes the requirement for a decision to have been made in compliance with all four foundational public law principles which all public bodies are required to follow.

This means that, in relation to all of the people affected by a decision made by a public body, it must be:

1) lawful

2) fair

3) rational

4) compliant with human rights legislation.

PURE will be looking at what each of these four requirements actually means in future articles.

here however, the focus is to understand that when a local authority decides to commit to a particular decision, that decision is immediatley assumed to be correct and it stands – unless and until successfully challenged otherwise. Again; that decision is immediatley assumed to be correct and stands – unless and until succesfully challenged otherwise.

perhaps understandbly then – to the increasing numbers of people who appear to have concerns relating to the transparency around the decision making of public bodies, the freedom of front-line practitioners to enforce the recommedations which they may make, or even the veracity, scope and validity of the views and information used to base such decsions upon – this realisation can be shocking and deeply unsettling.

and this is because in practise this means a person must realise that it is a local authority – not the person concerned, not someone who knows them well and not even an accredited independent expert – who has the power to make a decision about their life or the life of a person who they represent or care for. then, despite any consequences or evidence presented to the contrary, a local aurhority may stick to that decision until it is caused to rethink by perhpas the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman or by a judicial review finding that the way the decision was made – (not the decision itself) was at fault – perhaps because the decision making process somehow breached of one of the four principles set our above.

One contributor gave this example of what may be interpreted as this assumption of correctness in action :

“I couldn’t believe it – i was reading a document the council gave the court which said i was not putting the welfare of my daughter first – or something like that – because i refused to go and see four supported living places where they said she could live. but this wasn’t true – i saw two places on my own, well with my husband and then i went to see the other two with the same social worker who wrote the report for the court that said i never went and refused – i even have a ******* photo of the kitchen in one of the places i went with the same social worker in it!!! – but it didn’t matter, everybody just acted like i was the liar, and instead they believed the council and there was no one to show the photo to and my letters were ignored, then they said i was being an obstruction and making trouble and i think they knew they would be believed over me about it all anyway so actually they could get away with it. It was really scary and i have never felt the same about them since.“ (from VI)

perhaps then the resentment, indignance and sense of being disempowered and undermined which a person like ‘VI’ appears to feel when at the sharp end of a dispute with their local authority, is not surprising – especially considering the inherent or implied facets of the situation which tell a person that either someone else knows best or that someone else, not them, is the truthful party leaving the person themselves feeling accused and as if they have to prove something simply to be on an even playing field – feelings borne of an underlying local authority power which most people do not know exists until they disagree with that authority and which does not immediately appear to sit well next to trust, genuine partnership working or co-production.

in psychology there is a understanding of something called ‘the appeal to authority fallacy’. this is the logically based fallacy which claims that something is true based only on the fact that it was an authority figure who made the claim.

students of both law and psychology, as well as the lay person may find the comparison of the ‘assumption of correctness’ with the ‘appeal to authority fallacy’ to be inspiring and engaging.