Kamena Dorling, head of policy and public affairs at Coram Children's Legal Centre, looks at calls for changes to special guardianship orders to ensure that carers are adequately prepared and supported.
Emily Blackshaw, lead quantitative analyst and Max Stanford, head of impact and evaluation at Coram outline findings from an evaluation of the use of FGCs at the pre-proceedings stage.
Slough will become the second local authority to have its children's services transferred to an independent trust after children's minister Edward Timpson dismissed council proposals for alternative arrangements.
The head of children's services for Kirklees has been announced as the vice president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services for 2014/15.
Here's an admission: I've recently come to the view that what I've
believed for a long time about how I work is, if not wrong, woefully
incomplete. Worse, I've always known this, subconsciously, but have
ignored it because it did not fit my prejudices. For years, I have been
promoting the need to understand the legal basis of what we do. I am one
of the sad people to have read the year 2000 study on the law of
education and the role of the local authority, from preface to
appendices. I was one of the few students attending the lectures on
education law during my Postgraduate Certificate in Education
course.
Kelly Reeve, senior legal consultant and team leader for the Child Law Advice Service, considers the implications of cases concerning the use of covert recordings as evidence in family law proceedings.
Close to 70,000 young people struggling with problems relating to issues such as homelessness and employment face losing access to free legal advice due to government plans to cut the legal aid budget by 350m, a report has warned.