Speeding up care cases won't be achieved just by setting deadlines: Law Society

The Law Society has warned the government that the speeding up of care and supervision proceedings will “not be achieved simply by introducing new deadlines”.

The warning from Chancery Lane came after the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Education said on Monday that ministers would accept the key public law recommendation of the Family Justice Review and introduce a six-month time limit for the completion of care and supervision cases “as soon as this is reasonably practicable”.

Law Society chief executive Desmond Hudson welcomed the government’s commitment, but claimed that a number of measures would have to be put in place if the statutory time limit were to be realistic. These were:

• More efficient use of experts;
• More specialist family judges, “to provide judicial continuity”;
• More time for guardians to spend in ascertaining and representing the child’s views;
• A different attitude and approach to the conduct of child care proceedings.

Hudson said: 'We agree with the Government that reducing delays in care proceedings is crucial, and welcome its commitment to provide the necessary legislative impetus for change.

“This should not come at the expense of the welfare of the children who are caught-up in the court system. To effectively halve the time which cases take now will require additional resources – but court facilities are being closed and the number of solicitors available to help families is likely to reduce in the wake of legal aid cuts.”

Chancery Lane also criticised the MoJ’s refusal to stop charging fees to local authority for care proceedings, with Hudson saying it made "no sense".

He added: "There is no evidence that proceedings are initiated prematurely or unnecessarily, or that fees act as an incentive to use services more efficiently. If the cost of bringing care proceedings means that local authorities defer proceedings for budgetary reasons, this can only harm vulnerable children.

“These charges either affect local authority behaviour, in which case they risk damage to children, or they do not, in which case they are pointless. Both the Plowden report and the Norgrove Review came to that conclusion. Either way we ask the Government to urgently re-consider.”