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APPENDIX B
Children’s Services Legal Budget
The issue of legal charging exceeding budget was discussed at a meeting on 28 April 2005.
An increase in legal staffing had been agreed in 2003 to support the social work recruitment
difficulties. This is an appropriate time to review again the nature and level of legal
provision to children’s services. This report has been put together jointly by Donna Ohdedar
and Jane Wilton to assist senior managers in understanding the use of the budget and the
reasons for its current overspend and also to identify current and proposed actions to reduce
this overspend.
Background
The budget is divided 3 ways:
1. The largest allocation is for internal legal charges. This includes all internal legal
advice and attendance at court and meetings, on child care matters for children whose
cases are in the family court arena (care proceedings initiated by the local authority).
Currently, the monthly cost of this service is approximately £24,000 per month.
2. The second largest area of expenditure is external legal charges. This is for work
undertaken by independent barristers and solicitors when counsel is needed on a case
for legal reasons, or when internal solicitors because of their availability cannot cover
the case.
3. The smallest part of the budget is for ‘professional fees’. The main expenditure on
this budget is for the local authority part of the costs of professionals such as
psychologists and medical experts appointed by the court for provide expert evidence.
The budget also covers one-off professional costs such as escorts for young people in
secure accommodation attending court, or independent reviewing officers for secure
reviews. It also covers initial court application costs.
02/03 03/04 04/05
Budget Actual Budget Actual Budget Actual
H20902
Internal Fees 107,600 233,163 111,040 274,999 113,820 280,996
D51702
External Fees 40,000 39,529 40,000 9165 30890 78,896
D51000 Professional
Fees 31,000 33,163 35,000 94,809 35,880 30,829
TOTALS 178,600 305,855 186,040 378,973 180,590 390,721
Number of 24 applications 27 applications 34 applications
care proceedings 51 children 45 children 59 children
applications
APPENDIX B
NB The actuals for professional and external in 2003/04 not accurate because of
different subjective headings used. (In 2003/04 barristers fees were coded
‘professional fees’.)
Approving expenditure from the budget
No expenditure can be made from the external and professional budgets without the approval
of the fieldwork sector manager FSM, Jane Wilton – or in her absence, the support sector
manager.
Jane signs off monthly invoices for internal costs on a monthly basis. Other invoices are
checked and signed off by Jane when they are received.
Quarterly meetings are held between Jane, managers of the legal team and Jo Edwards, the
court liaison officer, who consider and seek to address budget spends.
Factors contributing to overspend and actions to address these:
INTERNAL LEGAL BUDGET
1. Numbers of cases
There has been an increase in the number of proceedings (24 applications in 02/03
compared to 34 applications in 04/05). Per application, there have been no major
increases in overall legal costs. However, we need to ensure that no proceedings are
initiated unless necessary.
Ongoing Action:
all new cases are considered at a legal planning meeting and notes passed to the
FSM to ensure all reasonable options to proceedings are considered.
2. Implementation of new court protocol
The Joint Case Management Protocol, introduced in November 2003, has resulted in a
front-loading and compression of social work activity into a tighter timescale. This
has helped to avoid delay in determining outcomes for children, however, it requires a
tight turn around for decision making, assessments, permanency planning,
documentation and tasks generally, both for social workers and solicitors.
The Protocol also increased the workload for solicitors by requiring certain new
documentation to be provided, again within a highly prescribed timescale.
A number of steps have been taken to meet this demand. We introduced Legal
Planning Meetings in 2002 and formalised and increased the agenda in response to the
introduction of the JCMP. The function of the Legal Planning Meetings in addition to
examining the need for proceedings, maps out the action plan in those cases where
application must be made to Court.
APPENDIX B
The Court Liaison Officer prepared comprehensive procedures in advance of the
introduction of the Protocol and has since revised all Legal Guidance. In addition, she
regularly prepares practice notes, circulates updated guidance, case law and training
materials. Along with the Legal Team, she delivers training to all newly qualified
staff, family support workers, arranges seminars at the local Family Proceedings
Court and visits to the County Court to meet His Honour Judge Hamilton, who
presides over the local Judicial Care Centre in Birmingham. The Court Liaison
Officer also contributes to report writing training.
3. Court expectations
The Courts and CAFCASS have ever-higher expectations, eg. re: contact
arrangements. Legislation, Local Authority Guidance and case law, including that
relating to Human Rights and Adoption, have had an increasing impact on what must
be provided in the way of evidence for the application for an order and the plan. We
will continue to challenge any unrealistic expectations where appropriate.
4. Staffing in social work teams
The last three years have been characterised by inexperienced and short-staffed
fieldwork teams. Through measures under TCS, we are starting to turn the tide on
this. However, there has been greater reliance on internal solicitors over this period to
fill some of the knowledge and capacity gaps in the teams (e.g. intense supervision of
statements and care plans). This has contributed to some of the increase in legal costs
over the last 2/3/ years.
In addition, the lack of experience of staff has led in some cases to more protracted,
and therefore more expensive proceedings. In a review of cases over the last three
years as part of this budget review work, it was found that in most of the cases, there
had been diligent social work leading to permanency for the children. However, there
had been a small number of complex cases lasting over 40 weeks. In some of these
cases, change of worker, lack of vigorous line management, inexperience and poor
assessment had impacted on timescales and costs.
Ongoing actions:
Increase knowledge in teams through training – a range of training being
delivered and planned, including consolidation for new social workers
Increase knowledge in teams through support and supervision – the Court Liaison
Officer meets with ATMs and TMs regularly to address learning and practice
development needs
Continuing to explore most effective ways of improving report writing capacity,
and supporting dyslexic staff
Post of ‘Assistant Court Liaison Officer’ established under TCS to increase
capacity to support social workers and their managers within the sector and
reduce use of and costs of solicitors
Procedures have been updated to guide staff. When ACLO in post, CLO will
update and these and provide more detailed written guidance
APPENDIX B
Legal Team have established FAQ on website and guidance to social workers
about when legal advice should and should not be sought
5. Standards
Locally, Solihull’s childcare social work has a good reputation in the courts. To
maintain this standard is costly in terms of time and resources, but may result in
savings from shorter timescales in some cases, for example, where we have
successfully challenged attempts by parents and CAFCASS to extend proceedings.
It is practice in Solihull for solicitors to check and amend statements and other
documents before filing to a) maintain standards, but also b) to ensure that the
application is evidentially sound and c) meets current requirements (in terms of recent
case law and any other new guidance or legislation).
We will need to review whether we can afford to maintain this standard, and whether
we need to adopt practice in other authorities of limiting the time spend on solicitors
in checking written reports.
Action:
Review standard of reports and ‘legal checking’ process to seek to streamline e.g.
only ATMs forward evidence to legal and only one check by legal
6. Best use of solicitor time
In some cases, solicitors have been doing work that could be done by other staff more
appropriately and more cheaply. Under TCS, we established a new post of ‘Assistant
Court Liaison Officer’ (ACLO) at social worker grade to undertake some work
currently undertaken by solicitors (e.g. checking statements, assist social workers,
foster carers and other professionals with statements and in court). Despite two
adverts, we have been unable to recruit to this post so far.
We have also considered whether a legal assistant at a lower cost, should be recruited
within Legal Services to undertake some work currently undertaken by Solicitors.
Examples are taking statements from other professionals, attending Court with
Counsel. (This would enable Solicitors to become involved in other areas of work
outside of Children’s Services. For example, there is a particular need for additional
solicitor input as a result of the Council’s decision to implement Fixed Penalty
Notices for non-school attendance).
Charge-out rates for 2005/6 are:
£53.00 per hour for a Solicitor, (or £64.00 for a Senior Solicitor) and £43.00 for a
Legal Assistant.
All private law work is overseen by the CLO who deals with correspondence with the
courts and solicitors and attends court. This task is normally undertaken by legal
services in other authorities.
APPENDIX B
Action:
Legal team to continue to develop and advise newer staff in legal team
Legal team to appoint legal assistant to (estimate saving of £14,375)
Review recruitment of ACLO
7. Costs of internal service
Could the internal service be achieved more cheaply if purchased externally? External
solicitors are required to charge for children’s legal advice on the basis of rates set
nationally (Legal Aid rates). In practice, solicitors charge a 20 or 30% uplift on Legal
Aid rates for children’s law work due to its complexity and this approach is accepted
by the Courts.
In 2001/2 work was outsourced to external solicitors as a result of our inability to
recruit in-house. External rates were between 40 & 50% higher and concerns were
raised by the Acting Fieldwork Services Manager over quality, which was patchy. It
was further found that external solicitors spent longer on tasks and charged more by
going to additional meetings, making long journeys to visit foster carers, etc as a
result of their commercial bias.
Action:
Periodic market testing
EXTERNAL LEGAL BUDGET
Whilst in 2003 lack of in-house capacity necessitated increased use of Counsel, we are no
longer in this position and Counsel are only used where there is a complexity or lack of
availability issue (where availability is an issue, all in-house solicitors are contacted before
Counsel are involved).
Solicitors negotiate all Counsel’s fees in relation to each hearing. We are currently working
with Birmingham City Council to reduce fees to local authorities serviced by Birmingham
Chambers.
Any use of external solicitors and barristers is subject to agreement from FSM and only
agreed where essential. A number of actions have been agreed to keep control of this
expenditure:
Ongoing actions:
Ensure that we get best value out of barristers e.g. consistency of barrister,
feedback to solicitor etc
Legal team to develop draft checklist to screen requests for attendance by
barrister and solicitor at specific court hearings
APPENDIX B
Social workers to complete feedback forms at the end of each case which allow for
feedback to be given as to performance of specific Barristers and this informs the
Barristers and Experts lists held centrally in Legal Services
Obtain estimates from counsel and from legal team at beginning of case, enter
onto commitment systems and approval to be sought for any changes
PROFESSIONAL FEES BUDGET
An impact of the JCMP has been more effective scrutiny in court of requests for experts and
independent social workers. In many cases, experts are needed to help inform timely
decisions for children, and costs are shared between parties. Where appropriate, we robustly
argue against use of experts. Increasing the skill and experience of our social workers should
add weight to the recommendations of our assessments, and should help reduce the need for
experts.
Other professionals such as psychologists, psychiatrists and independent social workers are
sometimes commissioned to undertake pieces of work in care proceedings, either by
Children’s Services or parents. Where Children’s Services commission such work, every
effort is made to use resources such as the Looked After Children’s Project.
Where parents seek external assessment, the Council will always argue it should not
participate in funding additional assessments and can often do so where the adequacy
of its own assessments can be proven. The ultimate decision rests with the Court and
unfortunately, in more cases recently, we have found that despite vehement opposition on
behalf of the Council, we have directed to participate in funding external assessments.
Timescales for proceedings under the protocol require parallel assessments of family
members and any alternative plan such as adoption or fostering. Even where there has been
excellent social work practice, expert assessment may either be necessary and agreed by us.
In other cases, where we think they are not needed, the court may still order them and
sometimes does. At present, we do not have sufficient in-house resource to complete all
extended family assessment, though through TCS are building capacity in fieldwork teams
and in the new kinship care team. Often there is very little choice of independent social
workers who can complete the work in timescale and agencies charge extremely high rates
for this work.
Ongoing action:
Continue to argue when we judge external assessments are not needed
Agreed appointment of social worker in kinship team to increase capacity in-
house to undertake these family assessments
APPENDIX B
LEGAL SERVICES: EDUCATION
1. Delegated Budgets
The meeting on 28th April 2005, also discussed legal charging for Education and
noted that budgets will be delegated in specific service areas at the start of the new
financial year (2006/7). This will enable Managers to oversee legal spend and sign-
off invoices checking against matters more familiar to them.
In the interim, the current sign-off arrangements will continue, although Legal
Services will split invoices into three areas:
i) Education
ii) Education Welfare
iii) Special Educational Needs
Managers for each service area will be copied into invoices for information only.
2. Advice to Schools
This will continue to be charged to the Directorate rather than individual schools.
However, detailed printouts will be provided of advice given to enable thorough
monitoring of this expenditure.
3. Judicial Review
In the case of receipt for a claim for Judicial Review, Legal Services will alert DMT
at the outset.
Summary
The legal budget for children’s services covers three areas of expenditure. In all these areas,
actions are ongoing and planned to minimise and where possible reduce expenditure.
The budget has never been sufficient to meet demand and has always been significantly
overspent requiring legal reserves to be used at the end of the year. Work is needed to agree
a realistic budget allocation for 06/07.
It is recommended that Legal Services team includes a legal assistant to undertake some legal
work for children’s services more cost effectively.
Jane Wilton and Donna Ohdedar
23 August 2005
updated following discussion at DMT 3.10.05
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