Social Care and Education Team
The Social Care and Education team provides specialist legal advice on all matters relating to children’s social care, adults’ social care and education. The team is led by the Head of Law for Social Care and Education. The children’s social care work is led by an assistant head of law, 2 Principal lawyers and 4 senior lawyers, all with many years of expertise in this area. The adults’ social care and education work is led by two assistant heads of law, both specialists in their area, and two senior lawyers and one Principal lawyer for adult social care.
Childcare team
Our team deals with all aspects of child protection work in relation to local authority statutory duties. We provide advice and assistance on a wide range of matters including care proceedings, public law outline (PLO), freestanding placement and adoption advice and applications, section 7 and section 37 requests, judicial reviews and other complex matters.
Child protection is an extremely fast-paced environment, which can be challenging, yet very rewarding. It gives our team the satisfaction of knowing that they are contributing to achieving better outcomes for vulnerable children and young people.
Our team are committed to ensuring the best outcome for our clients and work tirelessly to achieve this.
Education team
Our education team provides specialist legal advice to all our client departments that relate to a number of educational matters. This includes advice on SEN matters and representing boroughs within tribunals, advice on admissions and exclusions, school attendance advice, transport, school organisation, and funding and legal advice for education committee reports. We also deal with judicial reviews challenging education decisions.
Our team has an excellent relationship with our client departments and we are committed to achieve the best outcome for them.
Adults team
Our team provides specialist advice to the 5 Boroughs on all aspects of adult social care including mental health in relation to local authority statutory functions. We represent our clients in the county courts, Court of Protection and judicial review proceedings in the High Court. Our team works collaboratively with our clients to ensure a seamless service is provided and that there is shared knowledge across the boroughs.
Neeta Sharma, Head of Law, Social Care and Education
Neeta qualified as solicitor in 1993. She started her career in Local Government as a trainee solicitor at Cambridgeshire County Council. After qualifying Neeta has worked at several local authorities in London Boroughs and County Councils, where she specialized in children’s and adult social care. Neeta was the Principal Lawyer at Kingston Council from 2006-2013 leading the Social Care & Education team before joining SLLP. She became Head of Law for the Social Care & Education in October 2023.
Lucy Craig, Assistant Head of Law
Lucy started her career in law working for the Crown Prosecution Service as a caseworker and then moved to Local Government to complete her legal training at London Borough of Harrow. She qualified as a solicitor in 2002 and initially specialized in children’s social care and education law. Lucy moved to London Borough of Merton in 2003 as Assistant Lawyer undertaking children and adult social care law and then later as Senior Lawyer mainly specializing in children’s social care law. Lucy became Assistant Head of Law in 2017 and she leads the children’s social care teams.
Meera Leavey, Assistant Head of Law
Meera started her career at the London Borough of Sutton as a paralegal in 2000 carrying out Right to Buy conveyancing, and then stayed to become a trainee Solicitor. She qualified in 2003 and remained at Sutton as the Assistant Lawyer specialising in Adult Social Care and Education work. She became a Senior Solicitor at Sutton in 2007 focussing on the same areas of Law, until she moved to the South London Legal Partnership in 2013. Meera became Principal Lawyer for Adult Social Care and Education in 2019 and the Assistant Head of Law for Education in November 2023. Meera leads the Education legal service for all 5 Boroughs served by SLLP and other Authorities who buy into our services.
Pamela Clarke, Assistant Head of Law
Pamela started her career in law as an Attorney at Law in the Caribbean in 1981 and was admitted as a solicitor in the United Kingdom in 1988. She was in private practice between 1981 and 1990. She has been in local government since late 1990 during which period she specialised in Children Social Care Law, Adult Social Care Law, General Local Government Public Administration and Information Law at various stages of her career. Prior to leaving LB Camden in 2010, she was a Principal Solicitor and Deputy Monitoring Officer with responsibility for managing the Property, Housing and Adult Social Care teams. Pamela joined colleagues to establish a Law Society special interest group for adult social care local government lawyers in 1992, which she chaired until 2010. She continues to be actively involved in the group and is currently co-chair of the London Lawyers in Local Government – Health and Adult Social Care special interest group. She joined LB Richmond upon Thames as a locum adult social care lawyer in 2010 and joined the shared legal service when it was established in 2011. She became Assistant Head of Law in 2019 and leads the Adult Social Care team.