Disabled Children: A Legal Handbook 2nd ed

Disabled Children: A Legal Handbook is an authoritative, yet accessible guide to the legal rights of disabled children, young people and their families in England.

The law in relation to this important group is complex and frequently misunderstood by those who have duties and responsibilities towards them. Many families also lack essential information about legal matters which substantially affect their lives and about the ways the law might be used to assist them.

The highly experienced author team expertly navigate the many, often overlapping, sources of law, explaining the differences between what public bodies must do to support disabled children and that which they may do.

The second edition includes

• detailed coverage of the changes in the law on special educational needs and disability (SEND) included in Part 3 of the Children and Families Act 2014 and the SEND Code of Practice, including education, health and care (EHC) plans
• Working Together to Safeguard Children guidance (2015) and local authority social care duties to disabled children
• how the changes to the National Health Service introduced by the Health and Social Care Act 2012 impact on disabled children
• detailed information on how to obtain suitable housing for disabled children and their families under the Housing Act 1996
• new chapter on decision-making and mental capacity
• increased information on transition to adulthood and on the provision of services for young people under 25
• new chapter on legal remedies through tribunals, judicial review, ombudsmen and complaints procedures men and complaints procedures

This book is essential reading for those working with disabled children and their families in charitable, independent or statutory sectors: advisers, advocates, lawyers, social and health care professionals as well as for those in academia - students and educationalists.

Above all, this book is written for families with disabled children and disabled children and young people themselves to provide information about legal matters which substantially affect their lives and about the ways the law might be used to assist them.