The process of making a compensation claim

y advise families of children with cerebral palsy or other birth injury to make a formal complaint to the hospital. The formal complaint process has its place but is very time consuming and exhausting and where a child has been very seriously injured, the Court is going to need to be involved in any event. Unnecessary steps should be avoided and avoiding the hospital complaint process will save between six months and over a year at the outset.

Please talk to us before taking this step as we can save you considerable time and energy.

How long does a cerebral palsy claim take?

It generally takes us one month from first contact with the family to obtain legal aid for a child. After that it takes about three months until we are able to instruct the first expert as we have to obtain the medical records from the GP and treating hospitals and this takes time.

The first expert is most usually an Obstetrician who is required to comment on whether mistakes were made during the confinement and delivery. The best experts are very busy and it can take a further six months to obtain the first expert report. A ten-month wait therefore before the first palpable progress is made is not uncommon.

If the first expert report supports a claim (identifies medical negligence), legal aid is extended and we then obtain a report on any MRI or CT scans of the brain already available. At the same time we commission reports from two Paediatricians (a Neonatologist and a Paediatric Neurologist) to deal with whether the birth injury was caused by the negligence. We might also need a report from a Midwifery expert if the midwifery care is subject to criticism. Those additional reports will take up to a further year to obtain.

If all four or five of the reports are supportive, we will involve a barrister to prepare the Court documents and will prepare a formal letter of Claim to the hospital. That takes the wait to two years from first contact. At this point we will often have a conference with the barrister and the experts (with the family attending) to discuss the whole case.

The hospital will then have three months to respond formally to the letter of claim. If they admit liability then matters can be moved forward very quickly. If liability is denied then Court proceedings have to be started and it can take a further 18 months or more for those to be concluded.

We therefore have to warn a family that it can take four or more years for a cerebral palsy claim to be finished.

If we first take a referral when the child is very young, it might not be clear at the age of four what the future holds for her/him. What we do then is to win the claim for the child, enter judgment against the hospital and obtain an interim payment to help the family. This interim payment can be a substantial sum. We then postpone valuing the claim until the child is old enough to enable us to do so. The paediatric neurologist or educational neuropsychologist will tell us when this will be.

The investigative process is long and complex, but you can be confident that we are looking after your best interests throughout the whole process. We have an excellent support team who can help with many other issues you may be facing, like special educational requirements. Click on Special Lives to read more. We signpost clients to the excellent services provided by Scope.