If you find yourself in a situation where you are having to fight in order to secure the specialist support that your child needs, you’ll likely come into contact with professionals that you’ve not had to deal with before and it can be difficult to understand who does what.
Making sure that a child gets the special educational support they need is the law and it’s important that we, as parents and carers, ensure that the legal responsibilities which schools and Local Authorities have are being met.
We’ve got a webinar coming up on 21 November 2024 all about disability discrimination, when your child is not getting what they should because of their disability. This infographic gives you some examples of times when that might happen:
You can book onto the Understanding Disability Discrimination webinar by clicking here.
Navigating the SEND system is never easy and that’s why help and support is available at every step. To give you an idea of who is best to help you in what circumstances we’ve put together this short guide:
What does an Advocate do?
These are the fantastic group of experts which we have here at Sunshine Support. Our Advocates are amazing (if we do say so ourselves!). All of them have a huge amount of personal and professional experience in the SEND system which means they get it. They know that you are feeling lost, desperate to help your child and confused as to the path you need to take to get them the best result.
To understand how an Advocate can support you, think about everything you are doing right now as a parent to secure your child’s educational rights – this is what we can help with. We can walk alongside you through everything you are doing – putting in an EHCP needs assessment, meeting with school, communicating with the Local Authority, doing a Pre-Action Protocol letter, submitting all the forms for the SEND Tribunal and helping you to gather the evidence you need.
In relation to the other two forms of support we are talking about here, hiring an Advocate is the most cost effective solution to getting support, with our prices for Advocate support starting at £102 +VAT an hour. The only thing our Advocates cannot do is stand in front of the court (which is different to a tribunal) and present your case as we don’t have right of audience. That would be for a Solicitor or Barrister to do.
Our advocates are hugely in demand due to their expertise and success rate – if you would like to book in an initial call to find out more about how we can help you, visit our form here.
What does a Solicitor do?
You’ll most likely need to engage the services of a Solicitor who focusses upon educational law. These are legal experts that can help you once your case ends up in either the SEND Tribunal or to Judicial Review. Importantly, if you start working with an Advocate and then bring in a Solicitor they can work together and we have done this on many occasions.
Hiring a Solicitor can be considered a mid-range price option with an average Solicitor billing around £300 +VAT per hour.
What does a Barrister do?
A Solicitor will be the one to instruct a Barrister for you and they are the ones who will stand up in court and present your case. These are very specialist legal professionals with years of extensive experience and will most commonly only be used for complex cases. If your case goes to Judicial Review a Barrister will have to represent you there as they are the only ones permitted to do so.
Barristers are self-employed and work in groups called ‘chambers’. It’s important to know that because a Barrister is self-employed, they are able to represent anyone and are in fact duty-bound to accept a case if they have availability to do so – they can’t deny representation. In some cases, that might mean that they will be representing a parent but in another unrelated case, they might be representing a Local Authority. This diversity of what they cover is what gives them the wealth of experience they have. It should not cause you any concern if you learn they have previously represented your Local Authority, it is very common.
A Barrister is your most expensive option for representation at around £600-700 + VAT per hour.
What to know more?
We are delighted to be having Barrister Emma Waldron host a webinar for us on 21 November 2024 on ‘Understanding Disability Discrimination’, a really important subject which sadly so many of us end up facing. On the night, she’ll also be telling us more about how her role as a barrister can support you.
Tickets for this event can be found here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/970322710347
Alternatively, we have loads of barrister-led webinars on the Sunshine Academy, you can sign up for this for just £10.99 per month. It’s a bit like Netflix in that your monthly subscription allows you access to everything that’s in there – and there are almost 200 courses for you to learn from.
