Unfitness to Plead Consultation Responses - Law Commission ...

APPENDIX I
Case Study: Mr A
[This case study has been anonymised to protect our client’s identity and
confidentiality]
Mr A first attended Kids Company as a late teenager. He presented at our street level
drop in centre the Arches II and was using the after school club and eating meals. He
was attending college and wanted help with his university applications so he could get
out of the gang he was involved in. Mr A had been to Kids Company as a younger child
to play and had returned. Mr A was supported to apply for university and gained a place
and we did not hear from Mr A as he mostly disengaged from services, except when he
popped in to say his course was going well and he was happy.
Mr A reappeared at Kids Company following us not having heard from him for about a
year. He was on tag, and seemed quite shaken and said he was staying with his brother.
Mr A was having difficulty returning to his university education as he had been in prison.
Mr A had been involved in a violent fight and had been charged with either ABH or GBH
however the details of this were unclear. Kids Company is not automatically entitled to
records from statutory agencies and so as an agency we are reliant on the information
the client provides, or checks we can make ourselves.
Mr A seemed genuinely confused about the incident that led to his arrest. At this point
we feel that there should have been at once an assessment of whether he was unfit to
plead. When we tried to trace Mr A’s history of incarceration we could not find evidence
that Mr A had served a sentence under his own name. However when he came to us he
was on tag. Mr A stated that he had many different names and it was only upon working
with Mr A more closely that we began to understand that he was ill and had been for
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