How to Arrange a Legal Gateway Meeting and Accessing Legal Advice including Urgent Duty Line

1. How to Arrange a Legal Gateway Meeting

N.B: If urgent legal action is under consideration, advice should be sought via the Urgent Duty system. See Section 4, Accessing Legal Advice in Other Situations below.

The decision to progress to a Legal Gateway Meeting (LGM) will be made by the Service Manager following a pre-LGM discussion with the social work team, the outcome of which will be recorded on LCS by the Service Manager. A consistent approach to the pre LGM stage is required across the quadrants and the Pre-LGM Discussion Checklist, should be considered.

The LGM request will be sent to Business Support (sesta@surreycc.gov.uk, nesta@surreycc.gov.uk, swsta@surreycc.gov.uk) within 5 working days of the decision to progress to an LGM, using the LGM Booking Form.

If an LGM is needed more urgently an out of rota LGM will be arranged in consultation with Legal Services. Alternatively, it may be possible with liaison with other Quadrants to take an earlier slot allocated to another Quadrant.

PART A of the Legal Gateway and Booking Form should be completed by the social worker and Service Manager prior to meeting and forwarded with the documents listed below to the Childcare Legal Team – legal.childcare@surreycc.gov.uk 3 working days prior to meeting

• Updated Chronology;
• C&F Assessment completed in the last six months;
• Other relevant assessments;
• Care plan or a clear indication that options for a plan have been considered;
• Any Supporting documents evidencing concerns – e.g. police notifications;
• A Genogram.

The LGM should be chaired by a suitably senior manager and participants must agree on the specific issues, risks and mitigating factors of relevance.

Please see Care and Supervision Proceedings, Legal Gateway Meetings and the Public Law Outline Procedure, Decision to Initiate the Pre-Proceedings phase of the PLO.

2. Purpose of Legal Gateway Meetings

Legal Gateway Meetings are an essential part of the process for dealing with public law children's cases under the public law outline. 

Sir James Munby, former President of the Family Division in 'The Process of Reform: the revised PLO and the Local Authority', states that a properly organised Legal Gateway Meeting is invaluable and can be the key to achieving timely outcomes to care proceedings. He also recommends that local authority lawyers be involved, advising and assisting their social work clients, at an early stage.

A Legal Gateway Meeting should be held to discuss the way forward in a particular case, where an application for a legal order may be required. This can include:

• Following an application for an emergency protection order when consideration is being given to an application for an interim care order;
• When it is clear that the protection or welfare of a child cannot be achieved by agreement with the parents, or the security of a legal order is necessary to ensure the viability of a plan for a child, or the existing court order is not providing adequate protection for the child;
• Where it is thought that a legal order may be required in order to assist in the permanence planning for children, whether that is a return to the family or to achieve permanence elsewhere.

At the meeting, a decision should be made in principle about whether the threshold criteria has been met. The local authority should then decide, based on a robust analysis of the level of assessed risk, whether:

• It is in the best interests of the child to provide a further period of support for the family with the aim of avoiding proceedings; or
• Whether proceedings should be initiated immediately.

The meeting should also identify any evidence gaps, clarify whether additional assessments will be required, and consider what would be a suitable draft care plan for the child.

Note: where children are already section 20 Accommodated there should be no delay in issuing proceedings where this is required (see Decision to Look After Procedure, Section 20 Accommodation and Care Planning Procedure).

3. Considerations

A Legal Gateway Meeting is an opportunity to discuss a case fully, and to consult with colleagues to ensure that children are the subject of active case management and that appropriate legal action is taken when required to promote and safeguard the welfare of the child.

In order to enable a full discussion to take place, the following must be available:

• Updated Chronology;
• C&F Assessment completed in the last six months;
• Other relevant assessments;
• Care plan or a clear indication that options for a plan have been considered;
• Any Supporting documents evidencing concerns – e.g. police notifications;
• A Genogram.

The issues to be considered at the meeting will include the following:

• The reasons for the concerns and the evidential basis for establishing significant harm and the threshold criteria;
• Why Care Proceedings are necessary - what is their aim, objective and purpose?
• The steps already taken to clarify the issues of concern - i.e. Assessment, as well as other medical and other expert involvement;
• Whether the requirements of the Pre-Proceedings Checklist set out in the Public Law Outline have been met, including a written notification to the parents about the areas of concern and their right to seek legal advice. See Care and Supervision Proceedings, Legal Gateway Meetings and the Public Law Outline Procedure;
• Whether there is a need for further assessment;
• Have family and friend options been actively considered/assessed?
• When will the Assessment and other supporting documentation be available, if not already?
  
  Note that with pre-birth situations a recent High Court judgment has set out good practice steps to include:
  • A risk assessment of the parent(s) should be undertaken immediately the social workers are made aware of the mother's pregnancy and should be completed 4 weeks before the mother's expected delivery date and disclosed to the parent(s) (and their solicitor where relevant);
  • All relevant documentation should be then sent to the Local Authority Legal Adviser to issue proceedings.
    
    (See Care and Supervision Proceedings, Legal Gateway Meetings and the Public Law Outline Procedure).

• The action/decisions already taken and where the decisions were made e.g. strategy discussion/meeting, child protection conference, core group meeting;
• The proposed care plan for the child, including the proposed placement and any cultural, language and ethnic issues, the need for a parallel plan, consultation with parents and the wider family, whether any family members are available to care for the child on an interim or permanent basis, if so whether the required checks have been made, the proposals for contact;
• How the proposed Care Plan is to be achieved, including where appropriate arranging a date for the case to be presented to the Adoption Panel;
• Whether it may be appropriate to instruct any further expert assessment before the commencement of court proceedings - if so, what is the proposed remit of the instructions and the areas to be addressed, who should the assessment be done by and what is the likely timescale?
• Have there been previous Court proceedings in relation to the family? If so, what steps are required to obtain the papers in relation to the case from the Court? or another local authority?
• When will the social worker's Statement of Evidence be ready?

If Care Proceedings are recommended, the Care and Supervision Proceedings, Legal Gateway Meetings and the Public Law Outline Procedure should be followed.

Any potential issues/documentation regarding parental capacity to litigate should be flagged up at the meeting.

Please see further detail in respect of Legal Gateway Meetings including how to arrange these at Care and Supervision Proceedings, Legal Gateway Meetings and the Public Law Outline Procedure.

4. Accessing Legal Advice in Other Situations

Where a matter has already been allocated to a lawyer for pre-proceedings advice or for the conduct of an application before the Court, contact should be made with that lawyer with any queries.

Urgent Duty Advice

Telephone calls for urgent child care legal advice on matters requiring a same day response only, can be made between 9am and 5pm to MyHelpDesk on 020 8541 9000 (option 5). Details of the query will be noted and passed immediately to the duty solicitor who will prioritise calls and wherever practicable respond within one hour.

As a guide, urgent advice would include calls about possible emergency protection order or urgent interim care order applications, advice about the urgent removal of children from parents, Secure Accommodation applications, and urgent issues arising from child protection investigations.

If a solicitor is already dealing with a case, they should be contacted directly or in their absence via legal.childcare@surreycc.gov.uk/ Legal Childcare/CEO/SCC.

The Children's Services Emergency Duty Team have details of how to obtain legal advice out of office hours.

Non Urgent Duty Queries

Other non-urgent requests for legal advice, which are not appropriate for consideration at a legal gateway meeting should be sent to Legal Childcare/CEO/SCC.

The aim is to provide a substantive response within 10 working days and the enquirer will be notified as to whom their enquiry has been directed to. If the advice is needed more urgently this should be indicated on the form. The requests will be triaged upon receipt by one of the Principal Solicitors to ensure an earlier response (within 3 or 5 days) where required.