Social workers – not solicitors – as child welfare reporters
Summary: Social workers are fully trained and specialised over many years and have far more appropriate and independent skills to provide these reports to Family Courts. Children’s social workers’ whole ethos is the welfare of children and they do not have any other aim of their professional role. Lawyers will have a few days training... Continue Reading →
"In the end I instructed my solicitor to write formally to ask [the Child Welfare Reporter, another local solicitor] to set out what qualifications and training entitled her to undertake the work she had done with our family. At that point my solicitor refused point blank to challenge her and when pressed, withdrew from acting... Continue Reading →
This information in the short paper below is drawn from the Financial Memorandum accompanying the Children (Scotland) Bill, either directly or derived from the data it contains. Much of this information is not particularly clear in the original document, in part due to the number of errors it contains. Hopefully this summary makes things clearer.... Continue Reading →
For over 30 years Scottish courts have been appointing private practice solicitors as Child Welfare Reporters to carry out welfare assessments of children and their families. The overwhelming majority of those solicitors have no qualifications, training or relevant skill to entitle them to carry out such sensitive and challenging work. Worse still is that Scottish... Continue Reading →
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