The Child Law Advice Line

ACE The Advisory Centre for Education The Child Law Advice Line offers advice on all areas of family, child and education law.

These include: child employment; school issues ranging from admissions to exclusions; family law and more as we detail below.

The Child Law Advice Line currently operates a telephone helpline for users to contact a legal adviser. We also be offer digital services. This includes access to factsheets, a virtual assistant and web-chat facilities to talk with an advisor.

We offer advice on all areas of family, child and education law. This includes:

Divorce and separation; family breakdown; mediation; parental responsibility; custody and shared residency; parent and child contact; child maintenance; kinship care; adoption; children’s welfare; domestic violence.
Children at risk of going into care, in care and/or leaving care, child protection procedures; looked-after children; contact with looked-after children; local authority support services to children in need; those at risk of homelessness and statutory complaints.
School issues, including advice on all aspects of state-funded education for children of statutory school age e.g. admissions and appeals; attendance; bullying; complaints; discrimination; exclusions; transport.
Similar school issues for children with disabilities / special needs, plus legal issues relating to special educational provision; transport; learning difficulties and education tribunals.
Child employment.

From our website, users will be guided to the level of support they require:

We have free online access to downloadable factsheets on our website, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. These sheets would provide up-to-date information on new and existing legislation relating to family and education law.
For users who need help finding the information they need, a free ‘virtual agent’ will allow them to interact with the website. This would take the form of a textbox into which the user would type their query and then be guided to the relevant information.
If a user needs to communicate directly with a legal advisor, for example if they required tailored advice, the site would provide them with options to receive intensive support from a legally trained advisor, who could guide them through any relevant processes. These options would include:

Online Instant Messaging Facility
Freephone telephone advice

The instant messaging facilities will be available from 9am until 6pm, Monday to Friday (www.childrenslegalcentre.com).

The advice line will be staffed 8am to 8pm, Monday to Friday and a voicemail facility made available outside of these hours (Freephone 0808 802 0008).