Q&As
Safeguarding Concerns: Duty to Refer to Social Services?
Where a client raises concerns about a serious safeguarding risk to a child, is there a responsibility to make a referral to social services? Is the client’s consent required for a referral to be made? What steps should be taken to ensure a referral is made?
Safeguarding concerns relating to children are sadly a feature of the practises of most solicitors and barristers engaged in family law work. There is an inherent tension between the understandable desire to protect the child particularly where a serious safeguarding risk is identified, and the duty of confidentiality owed to the client. Legal representatives are not social workers, and their professional duties may from time to time conflict with what they perceive to be their moral obligations where information is disclosed by a client that leads to a safeguarding risk.
Solicitors and barristers owe a duty of confidentiality to their clients (paragraph 6.4 of the Code of Conduct for Solicitors) and that duty is unqualified. The duty is to keep the information confidential, not simply to take reasonable
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