For many years Clan Childlaw has taken the lead in the development of child centred and trauma informed lawyers in Scotland. Over the last decade it has made significant progress in establishing the benefit of a child-centred approach to representing children and young people in court and in children’s hearings.

As part of early developmental work, the Child Law Network – a network of expert child and young person lawyers from across Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland – began to create resources for lawyers and how they could be used to embed accreditation of lawyers for children in Scotland.

Through this funding, Clan Childlaw will now be expanding on this early scoping work and begin to focus on building the following key objectives within the Lawyers For Children project including:

• Developing a best practice model for working in a child centred way and embed those practices through practical learning, mentoring and supervision.
• Establishing membership and network model for lawyers for children giving access to online resources and updates.
• Creating an accreditation scheme to ensure that lawyers have the essential skills they need to give legal help to children.
• Contributing to cultural change within the legal profession by amplifying the recognition that lawyers for children need non-legal skills.

The aims of the Lawyers For Children Project is underpinned by the message of the charity’s recently launched Alright? animation sharing young people’s experiences of legal representation and articulates what they want from their lawyers.