Currently many grandparents, brothers, sisters and other relatives or friends are not entitled to free legal advice and representation when considering taking on the care of a child who cannot safely remain with the parents. This has significant implications for the child and their potential kinship carer. In some cases this results in kinship carers getting into significant debt in order to fund their legal advice.
A special guardianship order is a legal order that provides a kinship carer with ‘exclusive’ parental responsibility for a child until they turn 18 years old.
In its February 2019 report: “Legal Support: the way ahead”, the Ministry of Justice committed to extend legal aid. The report said it would “bring forward proposals to expand the scope of legal aid to cover special guardianship orders (SGOs) in private law – by Autumn 2019”.
Family Rights Group with other interested legal organisations including:
- the Law Society
- Resolution; and
- Association of Lawyers for Children
met with the Ministry of Justice to discuss the proposals. We drew up a paper setting out realistic changes that could be made to the legal aid regime. These changes could have an immediate and significant impact for potential special guardians.
See also our article in Family Law Week which discusses this further – Guarding Special Guardianship: the need for legal aid reform.
In Spring 2022, Family Rights Group facilitated an inquiry into legal aid and advice on behalf of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Kinship Care. Read more about that on the APPG’s website.
In Autumn 2022, the Ministry of Justice laid draft legislation to ensure special guardians who are applying to take on the care of children are eligible for means and merits tested legal aid in private law court proceedings. See Family Rights Group’s response here.