You may get a letter from Social Care advising you that they wish to hold a Public Law Outline (PLO) meeting, or it might also be called a Pre-Proceedings Meeting.
These terms refer to a meeting with Social Care, their Lawyers, and the parents of the children that the Social Workers are worried about. It is usually the last step before court proceedings are issued and a chance to work with the Local Authority and make positive changes.
If you receive one of these letters as a parent, then you will be entitled to free legal aid and our solicitors can advise and represent you at these meetings. This means that we will attend the meetings with you. It is important that you call us as soon as you receive this letter. We can then contact the Local Authority on your behalf and talk through what the next steps are with you.
If the Local Authority social workers do not feel that matters improve or the case escalates, then they can seek their own legal advice and take the matter to Court, which begins the process of care proceedings.
This is very serious because if the Local Authority issue care proceedings, then they can ask the Court to make Orders to remove children from a parents’ care or for the Local Authority to share parental responsibility for children.
Therefore, it is really important that you take our expert legal advice during the PLO process and attend all meetings with your solicitor.
The meetings will include the allocated social worker for your child or children and their team manager who will talk through the concerns. You will have the opportunity with your solicitor to respond to these. Then towards the end of the meeting, a plan of action will be drawn up to look at how to address these concerns and the next meeting date will be set to review them
You will also have the opportunity to discuss who else may be able to care for your children, if the worst comes to the worst and the Local Authority do take the matter to Court. Those people or people in your support network may be invited to a Family Group Conference. This is a separate voluntary meeting without lawyers, where it is considered, what support is available to you as a parent and what this might look like in practice. This may be someone willing to be assessed to care for your children should you not be able to or it may be a close friend or family member who can provide respite or help with a certain challenge, such as attending appointments or collecting the children from school when you cannot.
Sometimes you will receive a letter giving you a few weeks’ notice for a PLO meeting, and sometimes they are very urgent. It is really important that you contact a solicitor immediately upon receipt of one of these letters, so that we can advise you further.
If you need advice please get in touch with one of our specialist family lawyers by calling 0113 284 5000 or email family@isonharrison.co.uk.
