One of my professional highlights of 2024 was being one of the first cohort to complete the Law Society of Scotland's "Lawyers for Children" Certification Course. As I logged on to Zoom on the morning of 27th August for session one, I rather naively expected to be met by a screen full of family and criminal lawyers. I imagined lawyers in those specialisms were likely to be the ones who most regularly found themselves representing children and young people.
One of the first of many challenges to my preconceptions over the coming weeks came from understanding the wide variety of backgrounds of those who were keen to develop their skills in this area. I am pleased to be one of around 20 Scottish lawyers across a variety of areas of law who now hold the certification and have completed specialist training in representing children and young people.
Why do children need specially trained lawyers?
Following on from the incorporation in our law of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), and the changes implemented by the Children (Scotland) Act 2020, children need to be enabled to exercise their rights and to be empowered to have legal representation, when required, in all areas of law. In addition, lawyers representing them need to have specialised skills to do that well and to develop a child-centred practice.
How can we best serve child clients?
Family law is all about relationships: between adults, between adults and children, between siblings, between lawyers and clients, between clients and public bodies and court systems. The course encouraged lawyers representing children to ensure our professional relationship is as child-centred as possible. Young clients especially need us to foster the lawyer/ client relationship well and to use different skills recognising their specific needs. We need to ensure that communication with children is simple, clear and concise, whilst also comprehensive and not treating them as entitled to any lesser standard of information or service. We need to ensure that we explain clearly unfamiliar and complex processes and procedure. We need to work hard to build a relationship of trust with clients who are children. I liked the encouragement to be curious and to take time to find out what is going on, why it is going on and what is my role in it – not to rush ahead to try and problem solve. We considered the impact childhood trauma, attachment issues and adverse childhood experiences, can have on these clients and some of the challenges we might face in communicating with children.
How will the course influence my day-to-day practice?
I am keen to seek and take opportunities to represent children, where appropriate, and to encourage others to do so. As part of the course we heard the results of research from the young people in Polmont Young Offenders Institute and in the justice system in England and it was so clear that children want to be listened to and have their voices heard when they come into contact with the civil or criminal justice systems. I am struck by the need to amplify many of the skills family lawyers employ with all clients. The focus has to be on the individual child – whether representing them directly or by ensuring that they are at the centre of the dispute between their parents. We need to assist parents in ensuring that they are not paying 'lip service' to the best interests' principle whilst trying to achieve their own desired outcome. One of the suggested tools to approaching issues with children was to ask them what they would want to happen if they had a magic wand, to help open their imaginations in expressing their wishes. I am sure all of us would like to wave that magic wand from time to time!
Children's views – the future
It has been a really interesting and relevant time to take the Lawyers for Children course – my personal experience is that Sheriffs and Court of Session judges are grappling with what to do with the views which they are now taking more readily and from younger and younger children, and how to deal with the conflict between those views and the often very genuine concerns of adults as to what is in their best interests. I look forward to hopefully seeing how this jurisprudence develops as future generations of children and young people are more empowered in their encounters with our legal system, and as we as lawyers develop skills to represent them in a more child-centred manner.
For more information or to speak to one of our family lawyers, please get in touch.
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