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The Legal Gateway Meeting will take place every week and will be attended by the Service Managers for the Duty Service, Child Protection and Court Proceedings Service and a legal representative. The meeting can also be attended by representatives from other areas of the service when invited, such as Young Peoples Support Team, CAMHS Service and Children’s Centres (Child and Family Support) Service who are able to allocate resources following referral to the panel. Other representatives can be invited as required.

The meeting will receive referrals for services from social workers and their accompanying team managers. Prior to the meeting,  a brief report summarising the position for the child(ren) and the family, historical involvement and request for services will be submitted for consideration. The request for services referral will incorporate much of the information requested as part of the pre accommodation check list.

Referrals to this meeting will be for cases where children are believed to be in need of accommodation, legal proceedings to be initiated  or in need of additional support to prevent detriment to their well- being. The meeting will consider interventions that have been tried to date and decide upon a plan for future interventions. These interventions will initially be time limited and will largely be reviewed by existing practice review systems (e.g. Child Protection Reviews systems, Child in Need Review systems etc). Particularly complex cases may be referred back to a further Legal Planning Meeting  for review where it is deemed to be appropriate.

Any child who is to be considered for a placement in care must be presented to this meeting for consideration prior to their admission to care. Only after consideration of the Legal Planning Meeting will care placements be approved. Part of the purpose of this panel is to ensure that all alternatives to care be considered prior to any care application.

Where, under very exceptional circumstances, emergency admissions into care have taken place, the children who have been subject to these emergency accommodation arrangements must be referred to Legal Gateway Meetings immediately following the admission into care for their case to be considered.

Alternatives to Care:

Legal Gateway Meetings will be expected to make recommendations regarding future service input to support children requiring additional service input.  Options they may then wish to consider will include:

• Intensive family support;
• Immediate access to CAMHS and /or therapeutic input;
• Out of hours support;
• Priority access to Family Group Conferencing;
• Intensive social work support via the Intensive Support Team or another service;
• Respite activity breaks/short breaks or respite foster care;
• Alternative approaches to support the child(ren) in question.

A simple referral form that where possible avoids duplication of other forms will be used to service this meeting and the outcomes of the meeting will be recorded. The meeting will often set review timetables for reports back where it feels appropriate. Service Managers who are members of this meeting will be expected to refer all team manager requests for bringing children into care to be considered by this meeting  prior to the offer of a care placement.

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