Cerebral Palsy Claims

Cerebral palsy government help and benefits

Help is available for disabled people with cerebral palsy and their carers from both national and local government. The local council has a duty under the Children Act 1989 to provide services such as holiday play schemes, adaptations and financial help with travel costs for hospital visits.

Some of these support services are means-tested. Contact the social services team at your local council, who will arrange a visit by a social worker to assess if you qualify for any of these benefits.

Benefits and support from national government include carer's allowance which is payable to anyone spending at least 35 hours per week caring for a disabled person in receipt of qualifying benefits. Disability Living Allowance (DLA) is payable if your child is 15 or under. DLA is not means-tested and has two parts: care and mobility.

Personal Independence Payment (PIP) replaces Disability Living Allowance for new claimants ages 16 to 64. PIP is also not means-tested. It also has two elements: a daily living and a mobility component.

Your local Jobcentre Plus will be able to give you more information about government benefits and support. Disability Rights UK has a number of factsheets about benefits. National charities such as Scope can provide advice and guidance (they have a useful online tool to calculate what benefits you may be entitled to) and the Gov.UK website contains information about support for disabled children.

Do I have a cerebral palsy case

Where negligence, a word perhaps better understood as “fault”, has caused a brain injury such as through delay in identifying or responding to foetal distress during labour, it ought to be possible to make a successful cerebral palsy claim.

In the aftermath of a traumatic birth, the last thing on concerned parents’ minds at such an emotional time will be whether they have a legal claim. Attention will rightly be focused on the baby’s immediate well-being, rounds of medical appointments and coping with the many challenges cerebral palsy brings. Although, many parents seem to know almost instinctively if something went wrong with mother and child’s care, some leave it many years before seeking legal advice. We do though recommend that expert legal advice is taken sooner rather than later.

Cerebral palsy cases are complex and can take years to conclude. Wait too long and evidence might be lost or forgotten. Concerned parents should contact us for advice about cerebral palsy claims as soon as possible. Initial consultations can be arranged quickly and on a no cost to you and no commitment basis. After all, you need to be sure you can work with your solicitor and feel entirely comfortable that they will represent you and your child expertly and sympathetically.

Once liability is proven, families need not wait until the end of a case for support. Substantial interim payments of compensation can be obtained to provide immediate help with care and adapted accommodation whilst the full amount of the claim is carefully investigated.

Our experts have successfully won record-breaking sums of compensation and work with other specialist colleagues to access a range of advice to ensure the future financial, medical, educational and social needs of a client with cerebral palsy are met as fully as possible. If we believe you have a good case, our cerebral palsy lawyers will act for you with passion and commitment working tirelessly for the justice and lifetime support your child deserves.

How do I make a cerebral palsy claim

The first and most important step in investigating a cerebral palsy claim is to choose a solicitor with the right medico-legal expertise. Cerebral palsy claims can be lengthy as well as technically and emotionally demanding. You need to be certain that your solicitor has the right experience and their law firm sufficient resources so as to be equipped to handle the considerable responsibility of taking on your case.

We can arrange meetings at your convenience and preference over the ‘phone, at one of our offices, at your home or elsewhere if you choose. Mother and child’s medical records will have to be collected and meticulously analysed. Statements will be need to be taken as to what happened and to cover key points in the records. Then independent expert opinion will be needed. Just for liability alone, typically reports will have to be obtained from an obstetrician, neuro-radiologist, paediatric neurologist and sometimes neo-natologist and midwife. If it has not already been done, detailed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans may have to be arranged to confirm the precise location and nature of the brain injury, help pinpoint when it occurred as well as rule out congenital causes.

Rarely do the first set of experts’ reports cover all of the issues and answer all of you and your lawyers’ questions. A conference is usually essential with a specialist barrister or QC to bring the experts around a table with you to analyse what happened and whether there is evidence to enable a claim to be brought with reasonable prospects of success.  For some parents and carers finding out that a lifelong disability was not caused by culpable avoidable human error is itself a source of relief.

For those who do have a valid claim, much work is then needed to gather the evidence and present it is the best possible way provided by the law.

Above all, it’s important that your legal team are not only technically expert and on the ball but also caring and sensitive to what you are going through. You also need them to recommend experts who you can absolutely trust and who have experience not only in their chosen specialty but also in giving evidence in court.

Part of our role in supporting your family when making a cerebral palsy claim is to prepare you for what's going to happen in the future. No amount of compensation will ever make up for substandard care that caused your child a lifetime of dependency on others. However, our team can at least ensure that your son or daughter is provided with all the help required for a loving, secure and fulfilled life tailored to their particular condition and circumstances to unlock their own full potential.

More about cerebral palsy

Cerebral palsy is a broad term used to describe a group of lifelong disorders that are caused by damage to the developing brain sometimes before, during or soon after birth.
In some children with cerebral palsy intellectual function is fully preserved while others have almost no cognitive ability.

The question of what caused the cerebral palsy can be investigated almost immediately after birth. However it takes much longer, typically until age six or seven, before experts will be able to give reliable predictions about likely levels of communication, mobility, independence, educational potential and life expectancy. For that reason, the question of whether there is a claim is usually best investigated first before detailed calculations are done as to the likely value of any such claim.

The symptoms of cerebral palsy can vary from slight clumsiness to extensive ‘spasticity’ (uncontrolled contraction of muscles attached to the skeleton) affecting all four limbs and head control. Early signs usually appear before the age of three. Parents are often the first to observe that their child is slow to reach developmental milestones such as learning to roll over, sit, crawl, smile or walk. Some affected children seem rigid or stiff. They also may exhibit an unusual posture or favour one side of their body.

Sadly, a significant proportion of children with cerebral palsy also suffer from epilepsy. The severity of their epileptic seizures can correlate directly with the severity of their cerebral palsy. The intellectual function of children suffering from this combination of cerebral palsy and epilepsy can be severely impaired.

Every child is an individual and this is equally true of those afflicted with cerebral palsy. Each has specific needs and challenges. At Shoosmiths we work with these special children and their parents to ensure that the help afforded by the law is within reach and accessible.