Children
Safeguarding children in Suffolk is a priority for SCC Legal Services. We provide excellent legal advice to Children’s Services on all aspects of child protection, fostering and adoption.
We have an outstanding relationship with all organisations within the authority responsible for the safeguarding of our children. We ensure that the welfare of all children residing in Suffolk is paramount and promoted.
We provide specialist expert legal advice in cases involving children.
We have specialist lawyers, caseworkers and paralegals that make up our childcare team. We work closely with our clients and understand the pressures and challenges that are present when working in the safeguarding arena.
We are accessible to our clients and will provide prompt, clear and thorough legal advice. We operate a duty lawyer system so that advice can be obtained for any query that the client may have.
We advise our clients in cases that are both in and out of the court arena. We provide in-house advocacy and continuity of legal representation to our clients.
The team
Adult
The adult social care team advises social services and their partner agencies on all matters affecting vulnerable people. Our legal team specialise in protecting adults (and over 16’s) through legal proceedings in Court of Protection and High Court.
We advise and represent the council in all other aspects of social care support to adults including mental health, mental capacity assessments, deputyship and complaints.
We provide advice in relation to all types of deprivation of liberty, whether in care homes or the community and represent social services in challenges to DOLS authorisations.
Suffolk County Council Legal Services exists to ensure that our clients have specialist, cost effective and practical legal advice at the time it is needed. We are available to advise by phone, email or via face to face, Teams or skype meeting to support clients in making lawful and robust decisions.
Our highly experienced legal professionals help our clients understand and overcome the complexities and challenges of the public sector environment, avoiding unnecessary costs to constrained budgets.
The team
Education
The Education team supports officers across the council involving education law and providing advice and support on a range of subjects including:
- special educational needs and disability
- applications to the SEND Tribunal
- school performance
- organisation and governance
- education funding
- school transport
- admissions and exclusions
- elective home education
- children missing in education
- complaints
- judicial review
The team also supports headteachers and governing bodies of maintained schools for general legal advice on any issue as needed. This is either answering them directly or passing to other teams within Legal Services for further specialist advice.
The team
