A comment from a prominent expert in social work that Haringey’s legal advice in the Baby P case had been provided by a locum solicitor with little experience in children's legislation, who recommended that there were no grounds for care proceedings, underlines the importance of rigorous selection procedures when appointing locum solicitors.
That’s the view of specialist recruitment agency TLTP Group after Professor Ray Jones, a professor of social work at Kingston University and author of a book on the Baby P case, listed the locum solicitor issue as one of three areas of omission prior to the child’s death during a speech to the British Association of Social Workers' annual conference.
The other two areas, he said, were the criminal investigations conducted by the Metropolitan police while Peter was still alive and the paediatric assessment service offered by Great Ormond Street Hospital.
“If you are going to hire a locum solicitor, this case highlights the need to really know or work with an agency that understands how the legal market works in practice,” explains Darryl Mydat, Managing Director, TLTP Group.
“This might sound basic but we spoke to one criminal solicitor recently who told us that an agency he was dealing with did not even understand the difference between a higher court advocate and a duty solicitor. Our legal recruitment team is led by a solicitor rather than a recruiter which is an important distinction.”
Mydat adds that the complexity and specialisation in the modern legal system demands that recruiters really narrow down the expertise of their candidates so that they can identify a position genuinely suited to their experience.
“As we tragically saw here, having many years’ experience as a family solicitor does not equal detailed knowledge of the Children Acts,” he says. “In order to fulfil their client’s expectations, when the need to use an agency arises, it is obviously vital that law firms and public bodies use professional, trained recruiters who understand the law and its complexities.”
TLTP Legal offers the recruitment of locum criminal solicitors both as police station representatives and duty solicitors and has also supplied practices with locum solicitors to take on work for firms or supplement existing teams. The new TLTP team is being led by Lee Marsons, himself a qualified criminal solicitor.
Founded in 2006, TLTP Group is a privately-owned recruitment consultancy specialising in the supply of professionals to both the public and private sectors worldwide. At the heart of TLTP’s role as a vendor manager is the guarantee to provide people who are unquestionably fit for purpose.
At the same time it ensures that its workforce is placed on assignments to which they are suited as individuals, where they are happy and content – assignments which suit their personal agendas and circumstances, where their contribution is appreciated, where they can provide the vital services for which they were trained and where they can further develop their skill-sets.
